A Crew Divided
by MrOwlMan
Summary: Ascher Grey and Lyanis Starque are two friends that escaped Purgatory space prison, and they're in search of a new life on Omega. Ascher wants to start a merc group with his turian friend, but not the type of merc group you'd expect. Things start going well till a friend-turned-enemy of Ascher's shows up and starts to ruin everything. Will Ascher make it out of this in one piece?
1. Prison Life

**Chapter 1: Prison Life**

The dim ruby colored light illuminated Ascher's prison cell as he sat against the steel wall, his right arm resting on his raised right knee, his left leg folded under his right. He ignited a tiny flame in his left hand, tossing it through the air into his waiting right hand. He'd been quite literally playing with fire for the past few hours to pass the time while he waited. For what, he wasn't sure. Maybe his dinner, an edible paste filled with the necessary nutrients required out of a normal meal. The grey food, if you could even call it that, had the same consistency as low fat peanut butter. That basically meant that it was hardly smooth, and felt like they took some sand and mixed it into the meal. The drink you got with it was a small styrofoam cup filled with less than clean water. You could get sick from the water, but it wouldn't kill you. Ascher never got sick, but he'd occasionally see a prisoner being literally dragged to the sick bay, moaning in pain the whole way.

There was a sort of recess. Prisoners were allowed into the base area of the cell block to socialize and whatnot. The guards lined the stairs as well as the base's perimeter, mainly turians, seeing as how the prison warden was a turian. There were a few human guards, not many though. Ascher mainly just hung out by his prison cell, zoning out as he stared at his hand, which was usually engulfed in orange flames. Other times, he'd saunter about the floor, humming his favorite songs to himself. It may have been 2166, but that didn't mean he liked any of the songs from that year, or that century for that matter.

Ascher may have looked like a fairly young human adult, but he was far from that. By human standards anyway. His actual age was a healthy 226 years young. The only defining features of his race were his tail, and his wings. Maybe he should say defining features of _both_ his races. Unbeknownst to him until he was about 20, he was a hybrid of two races. What exactly that entailed, he learned that over a longer period of time.

Today, he'd forgotten that recess was a couple hours before dinner, as he was reminded by the loud buzzer that sounded just before the prisoners were released from their cells. There was a turian guard waiting in front of his now open cell, toting a rifle. He hated turians with a burning passion, pun intended. There were a few okay ones he supposed, but most of the guards that worked at Purgatory were complete scum. Beating prisoners within an inch of their lives while the recipients of said beatings were completely defenseless. Ascher just tried to make the most out of the situation when it happened to him. That usually involved mocking the guard who was attempting to beat him into submission, which usually ended up in the beating becoming prolonged.

"Get up Grey," the turian guard ordered Ascher, staring down at him through his blue and silver helmet.

"Yes ma'am Lioness ma'am," Ascher replied with a smirk on his face, extinguishing his small flame before getting to his feet, crossing his arms as he looked back at the unamused guard. "How's my favorite turian guard doing today?'

"It's Lyanis. And you're just asking for another beating aren't you?" Lyanis sighed, quite used to this treatment from the prisoner.

"Oh you know it. Think I'm gonna try and break the record for most near-death beatings received at Purgatory prison," Ascher replied, his smirk growing into a big grin.

"I don't know why I put up with you," Lyanis said as he turned around and stepped aside, letting Ascher exit his cell into the large cell block.

"Because we're friends, that's why," Ascher replied as he stood next to the turian guard outside his cell.

"Don't remind me."

Lyanis Starque was the only one exempt from Ascher's burning hatred for turians. The two of them met the day after Ascher arrived at Purgatory. Lionis was a laid back guard who didn't really care much for his job at all. He just needed the credits. He usually turned a blind eye when a prisoner stepped out of line, unless that prisoner killed someone. Then he would actually do his job. Otherwise, if he was the one on guard duty during shower time, he'd make up an excuse for the prisoners who would get into a fight, physical or otherwise. A lot of prisoners respected him for that. He'd only gotten to know Ascher so well since he was assigned to bring him his food and release him for recess.

"Anything fun planned for today?"

"Guarding, being a lousy guard, and working guard duty as a lousy guard."

"Sounds fun."

"You?"

"Sitting in a cell while playing with fire."

"Sounds more dangerous than what I have to do."

"Because these cells are oh so flammable."

They stood next to each other in silence like that for a while, which eventually led to Ascher absent-mindedly humming a song from the 1970's.

"That another song from over a century ago?" Lyanis asked him casually, used to hearing his friend humming unfamiliar melodies.

"Yep. It was a popular one too," Ascher replied.

"Again, you talk as if you lived that long ago," Lyanis said, furrowing his brow under his helmet.

"You don't know how old I am," Ascher responded with a little sass.

"You've already told me you're 26," Lyanis countered.

This rendered Ascher silent for a moment.

"You don't know if I was telling the truth," Ascher said with mischievous look on his face, nudging the turian with his elbow.

And they talked like that for the rest of the recess. That's how they always talked. They'd conversate on a subject for a little bit, fall silent, then do it again on another subject. About an hour later, the buzzer sounded and the guards started herding the prisoners back into their cells while Ascher just continued his casual conversation with Lyanis all the way back to his cell. Once there, they said their goodbyes and their see you tomorrows before Ascher stepped back into his cell and Lyanis shut the door.

The turian sighed as he walked away from the closed cell and up the steps to his post. He'd been worked at Purgatory for 3 years now. He figured that the longer he worked there, he'd get used to the conditions of his workplace. But the fact that he'd stayed there did the exact opposite. The way Warden Kuril treated the prisoners on the prison ship was cruel, putting it nicely. The beatings, the executions, especially launching prisoners out of the airlock to 'set an example.' Lyanis didn't have a ship of his own, but he'd find a way out of Purgatory, and Blue Suns. Someday. Somehow.

Ascher sat in his cell, having just finished his 'dinner' and was busy melting the metal spoon, watching the glowing molten metal at the top trickle down the handle of the spoon, letting it leak onto his hand where it cooked his flesh. A long while back, he'd been trained to deal with unimaginable amounts of pain. The searing of his flesh barely felt like anything. Mainly it was similar to a multitude of near painless pinpricks traveling down his arm. A little while later, he placed the remainder of his spoon in his empty tray and put it on the slat, where the small rectangular space opened and the tray was pulled out. There was also a groan of annoyance, to which Ascher smirked.

"Come on Ascher! That's the third time this week!" Lyanis complained. "How do you even accomplish...oh yeah."

Ascher stayed silent, grinning upon hearing his friend sigh and walk away. Meanwhile, his skin had healed for the most part. Some parts still sizzled and gave off steam, which were the parts he watched in sick fascination as they rapidly healed. Another perk of being what he was: rapid cellular regeneration. That and slow bleeding. That way his body could conserve his blood and send it to the place while some of the other blood exited his body. Within a few minutes, his arm had completely healed, leaving a long white burn scar.

"Welp, there goes a few more nerve endings," Ascher said boredly before getting up to lay down on the metal cot that served as his bed. That's how he was trained to deal with pain a long while back. By literally frying his nerve endings. He yawned as he stared up at the ruby light tiredly. It was close to lights out for the entire facility and all was quiet. Just another night at Blue Suns Purgatory space prison. All was quiet except for the screams of another prisoner being beaten and the echoey clang of metal boots against the old steel catwalk above the cell block.

The nights at Purgatory could be interesting. They usually weren't though. The guards up top the catwalk occasionally had interesting conversations, usually about how much they loved or hated their jobs, other times about rumors floating around the facility. Tonight though, just after lights out, the night shift guards talked about how much they loved beating the prisoners. The way the night shift worked around this facility was that the guards were on a rotation. This only applied to a select group of guards though. For whatever reason.

"Beating the prisoners here is just so much fun sometimes," one of the guards said with sadistic glee lacing his voice. A turian by the sound of the undertone in his voice. What a surprise.

"Especially the human prisoners we have. The way the scream and plead for us to stop is just so satisfying," he continued. An anti-humanist at that. Shocker.

"They're so weak too. I can't believe the Council let them join the galactic community. They should've just let us finish them off," another guard chimed in. Were there any human guards on the night shift? Or was tonight the Turian Special? Ascher knew he'd face dire consequences for it, but he had half a mind to shout at them to pipe down.

For now, he'd just have to plot his escape. He didn't mean this seriously of course. He was trapped in the middle of space. Escaping this ship wouldn't do him much good. The last fight he'd started got him a beating and cell arrest for a week. He was confined to his cell for a week, minus recess, and the beating only lasted for the evening after the incident. Having burned the amount of days he'd been in that prison into the wall, he'd calculated that he'd be allowed back into the mess hall by tomorrow. That way, he'd be able to gauge the amount of possible exits while eating his food. He'd be able to take things from there. He might actually be able to pull it off tomorrow. He still had his powers, his fast healing, his tolerance for pain should he inevitably get shot. And, he could take Lyanis with him. He already knew he was going to hide out on Omega, and that since Warden Kuril wrote him off as just another human, he wasn't high on the buy list.

The next morning, the buzzer sounded at God-knows-what time, waking all of the prisoners up for roll call. All of the prisoners walked out of their cells once the doors swung open, and they were met with the usual line of guards they'd seen since having been sent or transferred to Purgatory. A few minutes after all the names were called and it was determined that no one had miraculously escaped overnight, the prisoners were sent back to their cells.

Around 2 hours later, or at least it felt that long, it was time for breakfast in the mess hall. The prisoners were individually escorted by the guards to the mess hall where the usual meal of 'Power Paste' was waiting for them. Once all the prisoners were in their respective mess hall, most of the guards that escorted them left to return to their posts, the other ones staying behind to keep the eating prisoners in check.

Ascher dug in, trying to finish his meal in a quick manner. There were people who would try to steal others' meals on occasion, and Ascher liked to keep his meal. Usually he'd stand up for himself by knocking his opponent's teeth out, but he didn't need that kind of distraction today. Pretty soon, he had finished his meal and had set the spoon in the empty metal tray.

Ascher was sitting at an empty table in the mess hall, just as he always had throughout his time at the facility. The only friend he had made was Lyanis, the last person he expected to like when he first arrived at the facility, considering his personal vendetta against turians. He didn't mind the lonely hours of the day so long as it meant he was going to see Lyanis in the evening hours. Lyanis made this place bearable.

But instead of getting up and flame blasting one of the guards, a guard came up to him first.

"Come on Grey. Warden wants to see you," the human guard explained.

Ascher was confused. He hadn't done anything significantly bad. Not in recent weeks at least, not counting the fight he started in the mess hall last week. Now he was generally curious as to what the Warden would want to talk to him about.

"Okay," Ascher replied, getting up from his seat and following the guard out of the room. He walked behind the human guard only to be joined by a turian guard behind him. Regardless, he followed his escorts down the metal catwalk, then turning right down a hall where they walked into the room at the end. The Warden's office.

Ascher followed the guard in front of him through the hatch to where the Warden was sitting behind his metal desk, filing through his recent payments by the look of his holotop screen. His olive and dark silver eyes flitted up to see the prisoner accompanied by the two guards, and smiled.

"Ah, Mister Grey. How nice of you to join me. How've you been?" Kuril asked Ascher, resting his head atop his folded hands.

"I've been okay. No one's been bothering me after last week's incident," Ascher smiled as he sat down in the chair opposite the Warden.

"Yes well, your cell arrest surely contributed to that," the Warden replied.

"How can I help you Warden Kuril?" Ascher folded his arms as he sat back in the chair, getting down to business.

"Straight to the point, I like that," Kuril commented, focusing his attention back on his holotop before addressing Ascher again. "I've noticed you've been chatting up one of my guards during these past few months. You wouldn't be planning anything stupid, would you?"

Ascher stared back at the Warden for a moment. "What? Like an escape attempt? We're in the middle of space Warden. I'm not stupid."

"I see that, contrary to some of the other prisoners here," Kuril responded, refocusing his attention on Ascher. "I prefer to keep my prisoners in line."

"Well everyone saw what would happen if they tried to do something drastic. Hard to forget the airlock," Ascher said, folding one leg over the other as he talked with the Warden.

"It's good to hear you remember that. Means I set a good example," the Warden smiled. "There's just one more thing I'd like you to explain to me before the guards escort you back to your cell."

"And that is?" Ascher said.

The Warden grabbed a metal box sitting next to his holotop that Ascher didn't pay attention to until now. It was a little larger than a wedding ring case, and opened up just like one from what Ascher saw. Kuril reached inside and grabbed an object between his forefinger and thumb, revealing a short metal stub with a rounded edge and a blackened, burnt end.

"You've been making a lot of these lately, and I don't exactly enjoy destruction of prison property, no matter how small," Kuril said with a slightly upset voice, his displeased expression staring back at Ascher's blank one. "Care to explain?"

Ascher needed to be cautious now. He could reveal his ability to produce, control, basically do anything he wanted to with fire. But that would be all that he'd reveal. He couldn't reveal anything further about himself, if what Cyrus and Roxanne said was true. He was starting to doubt that a little bit now, considering how they framed him, but he believed in the 'better safe than sorry' doctrine.

"Not sure how this came to be," Ascher said, raising his pinky, a small flame igniting at the end of it. Just like he was lighting a candle.

The Warden leaned forward with great interest at this new bit of information. "It didn't say in your report that you were a biotic."

"Biotics have more telekinetic based abilities, so I don't know if I'm biotic. To be honest, I don't know exactly what I am," Ascher stated, lying on that last part. He knew exactly what he was, but no one else needed to know.

"Interesting," the Warden said with a smile on his face. "It appears you're far more valuable than I realized."

"I guess, if you take into account my extensive criminal record," Ascher said. "I'm already a hitman."

"You were a hitman, you mean," Kuril reminded him.

Ascher waved his hand passively. "If I ever get out of here I might continue being a hitman. I might go be a mercenary on Omega. That place is loaded with the scum of the galaxy."

"By the way the planet that sent you is paying their fees, you'll have to wait a few years before that happens. Unless I sell you by then."

"In which case I'd 'convince' my buyers to let me go."

"Not unless I sell you to a group of krogan."

"I'd be grateful then. I love a good challenge."

The Warden actually laughed, something Ascher never expected to hear. It was weird, especially since it felt like he was befriending the Warden. He kind of felt like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank. Kind of.

"I like you Grey, you're the best piece of scum to have been sent to this prison," Kuril said. "But I'm starting to take away from your cell time. Go ahead and take him back officers."

Ascher got up and walked out with the officers, who took him back to his cell. He walked in once the door swung open, the turian guard shutting it behind him. He seriously needed to get out of this place.

Ascher was happy to see Lyanis at prison recess. This day was weird enough as it was, having made a friend in the Warden, he was just happy to have a normal conversation.

"You know when the next shipment of prisoners comes in?" Ascher asked the turian next to him.

"Two days from now, why?" the guard responded somewhat confusedly.

"I need to get out of here. It'd be nice if you could come along as well," the antsy man said, actually nervous about what more the Warden would want from him. He certainly would want to keep being sold as a last resort option for getting out of the prison.

"What happened to you today?" Lyanis asked his friend, weirded out by his unusual behavior.

"I had to reveal a secret of mine to Kuril," Ascher said worriedly. If he hadn't, then the Warden would've become more curious, then would've kept pressing till he got what he wanted. It sucked that he was placed at a higher value now. Sure, he'd probably get a lot less beatings now, but he now had a higher chance of getting sold.

"Like what?" the turian queried.

"He got wind of those spoons I kept destroying," Ascher explained.

"How did you do that to all those spoons anyway?"

"Can we talk about that later?"

"Fine."

"So are you in?"

"Well where would you take us to after we got to the cargo ship?"

"Omega. You used to be a merc right?"

"I'm not going to be a Blue Suns merc again Ascher. If we did pull this off, it'd be the end of my relationship with Blue Suns. And I'd be fine with that."

"I wasn't going to suggest joining the Blue Suns. They run this prison you idiot."

"Then what group would you want to join?"

"I was thinking we could start our own merc group. Except we could focus our efforts on the scum of Omega."

Lyanis just stared at Ascher after he said that.

"So you mean the whole of Omega," he responded finally.

"There are still good people on Omega. It's just that 98% of Omega is filled with the scum of the galaxy," Ascher smiled at the turian, who just shook his head.

"Y'know you'd have to do something pretty drastic for us to have a shot at escaping," Lyanis pointed out.

Ascher just smiled devilishly at that. "What? Like set one of the new prisoners on fire?"

Lyanis just shook his head. "The shipment of new prisoners arrives just after breakfast. I'll be on watch during breakfast that day, so I'll be the guard leading the prisoners in the cell block back to their cells. When we near the entrance, there's an elevator leading down to the cargo bay where the empty cargo ship will be. There'll be the guards from the cargo ship and the two pilots that we'll have to deal with too. That totals to six guards we'll have to deal with plus any other guards that get in our way," Lyanis explained very matter-of-factly. "There is a very good chance that we'll die attempting this."

Ascher just laughed at his friend's last comment. "You haven't seen me in action Lyanis. We'll be fine."

After he said that, the buzzer signaling the end of recess sounded and the prison cells opened. All that stood between Ascher, Lyanis, and freedom was two days.

 **FanFiction really needs to leave more characters for making story summaries, like seriously. There's so much more to this story than what my crappy summary details, because I promise you, I cannot fit the basic idea of this story into only a few hundred characters. Hear me FanFiction! Please fix this problem! Anyway, had to make this new account so I could post the rewrite of the series I want to write. I was ScarletDavidRose, and if you could refrain from reading my first attempt at a crossover fanfiction as well as an unfinished story. Well both of them are unfinished, but you know. Well I'm rambling now, so I'll shut up and do the typical FanFiction author advertising: R &R, if you don't like this story why are you even here, and I really don't give a crap if you flame me. I really don't.**


	2. Payout

**Chapter 2: Payout**

Ascher woke up to the familiar dim ruby light of his metal, claustrophobic cell. He himself was not claustrophobic, it was just that the ends of the metal cot connected to both walls of the cell, there was the toilet, then there was the ceiling. The space between the floor of the cell and the ceiling was only about nine feet too, which made him feel bad for some of the krogan prisoners here. All the cells were identical, and some of the krogan he'd seen were pretty tall.

But for once, he woke up with a smile on his face. That was because today was the day he was going to escape this hell hole. And he'd be doing it with his newest best friend. Lyanis Starque, Blue Suns mercenary turned lousy Purgatory prison guard. Almost always turning a blind eye whenever a prisoner committed a small offense. The 30 year old turian had been working at Purgatory for a total of 3 years, and was getting quite sick of it. He originally took his job to keep watch over the scum of the galaxy. That was until he saw Warden Kuril's methods of disciplining the prisoners, as well as how he obtained his credits. Having seen the way Kuril led things around the prison actually made him feel sorry for the prisoners at Purgatory, and made him want to go back to being a mercenary. It certainly paid more than being a prison guard, but even that job still got him credits. The only reason he stuck around those 3 years was because of the amount of credits he was getting.

The two of these men met when Ascher was first sent to Purgatory. Lyanis was the guard who escorted Ascher to his cell, since Ascher was the only prisoner Purgatory received that day. The two hit it off when Ascher made his first wisecrack about Lyanis being a turian and how that made him inferior in some way. To which Lyanis responded with a bit about how the human race had only joined the galactic community not too long ago. Ascher fell silent after that remark, to which Lyanis said that he won. This provoked a response from the 'human', who said that he liked the turian. A little bit of conversation after that, they considered the other a friend.

It was a good thing too that they were friends. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing what they were going to do today. Sure, one of them might've attempted it and might have been joined in their effort, but that was unlikely. Ascher reminisced about this from his prison cell, becoming slightly excited about the thought of the escape itself. He hadn't had a real thrill in a while that violence provided him. There was the fight he got into during lunch last week, but that didn't really count since he was defending himself against another turian prisoner who still held a grudge against humans for the First Contact War. Ascher had long gotten used to all the other species mistaking him for a human, so that wasn't the part that bothered him. What bothered him was that the turian hadn't grasped the fact that humanity didn't know of other intelligent species at the time, so there was inevitably going to be a reaction to the turians opening fire.

He'd let that go by now. The thing with him was that no, he wasn't a human. But for most of his life, he'd lived on Earth and among all the other humans. Humans weren't even that different from what he was, save the fire, the tail and the wing sprouting. Humans were intelligent, diverse in a good way, and had an incredible military program. His races were fairly diverse, not as much as humans though, but shared the other two traits. The point was that he would very gladly advocate for humanity on many subjects, especially the FCW, or the Relay 314 Incident as the turians liked to call it.

But back to the point. He and his best friend were going to escape this wretched place soon, and he was looking forward to the escape process as well as the payout. Like he stated earlier, violence provided him a great thrill that not many other things did. Perhaps it was just the way he was born, having been born of two races of natural born warriors. Whenever he got into an intense fight, whether it be with guns or a good brawl, all elements of the fight really got his adrenaline going. The feeling of riding your favorite roller coaster, the energy you can feel when the wind is blowing in your face, the speed of the coaster as well as all the twists and turns it provided. That rush of energy that just lights up your body like a Christmas tree, that was what he felt in the heat of battle. Not fear, not a sense of urgency. He felt a feeling of freedom when he fought against his enemies. That's why he was looking forward to the escape. Well it was the second reason, but it was a BIG second reason.

The first reason was obviously that he wanted to be free of this hell hole. His friend even agreed with him on that one, even after working at this place for 3 years. The both of them had seen their fair share of beatings ordered by the Warden himself, and how brutal they could be. Rather, Ascher had heard how savage the beatings could be. Usually there would be an echoing THUMP that would reverberate through the cell block, then that would be followed by blood-curdling scream of pain. Sometimes if the Warden wanted a prisoner to be beaten to the brink of death, you would hear more cracks than thumps that were of course followed by blood-curdling screams. If you listened close enough, you could hear the prisoner's pleas for the guards to stop, which would occasionally be met by a sadistic laugh.

That and the food sucked.

A couple slow hours later, the buzzer for breakfast sounded, and all the prisoners eventually got to the mess hall. Ascher sat down at his usual spot after grabbing his favorite 'Power Paste'. He scooped the paste out with the spoon at a normal pace, transferring the food into his mouth. He noticed Lyanis out of the corner of his eye standing guard by the entrance to the mess hall, doing his best to act natural. He held his rifle against his chest as he always did, drumming his two fingers against the barrel of the gun in anticipation. He had no idea if their plan was going to work today, but sincerely hoped it would. He was completely ready to leave this awful place. Whatever strings were attached to this place had been severed by his experiences at Purgatory. Within a few minutes, Ascher finished his meal, pushing the metal tray forward and resting his head on his hands as he waited for the buzzer to sound.

An agonizing amount of unmeasurable time later, the buzzer sounded. Ascher walked briskly up to the entrance where Lyanis was waiting, winking at the turian after making sure no one else was looking. The turian gave a slight nod, letting out a small sigh as the other prisoners took their sweet time lining up. Once everyone was lined up at the entrance, an additional guard came up to the back of the prisoner line as a part of prisoner transport protocol, and they exited the mess hall.

Ascher walked at the front of the prisoner line, just behind Lyanis. A long line of prisoners was walking past them as they neared the entrance to their cell block, en route to another cell block of their own. All of them passed by clad in the orange and black uniforms provided to new prisoners upon arrival, as well as the mixture of poker faces and looks of complete terror. As the line of prisoners coming from the mess hall neared the stairs to their cell block, Ascher 'accidentally' bumped into a few of them along the way. After he bumped the last one, he gave a single command.

"Combust, 60 seconds," he whispered. Once he uttered that command, the whole uniforms of the new prisoners he bumped into ignited into flames, lighting up the already bright catwalk.

The four prisoners, two turians, a salarian, and a vorcha screamed in near unison. They dropped to the floor like flies as they flailed around, attempting in vain to douse the flames engulfing them. Chaos erupted on the catwalk as all the prisoners that weren't on fire all let out different cries of distress. Some screamed obscenities as they tried desperately to get as far away from the flaming prisoners as the small space would allow. Prisoners pressed themselves against the glass of the catwalk windows as the fire licked its way across the suits of other prisoners, causing them to become more distressed than they already were. His distraction was working better than expected, as he was surrounded on all sides by panicked prisoners as well as guards attempting to regain control of the prisoners.

The guards tried firing lone shots into the air to get all the prisoners' attention, meanwhile refused to follow this example. He slowly but surely pushed his way through flurry of black and orange, trying to make it look as though he was trying to get the prisoners in order one by one as he beat the prisoners out of the way. He punched most of them in the face, kneed them in the gut, and shot the ones who just refused to get out of his way. The other guards saw this and fell for it, Lyanis' fake example and trying to beat the chaotic prisoners into submission. Eventually, Lyanis cleared a small space by the elevator. He then began scanning the bedlam for Ascher, beating down any prisoners that came his way.

Ascher was completely lost in the chaos. There was already a lot of people heading out of the mess hall. Maybe about thirty if he had to guess. The chaos he caused added about thirty more prisoners to the shuffling mix. He was more annoyed than worried, having seen Lyanis beat his way towards the elevator. Ascher started to surge forward, trying to see past all the people taller than him. He was already taller, but there were the fronds of salarians and the massive heads of krogans blocking his vision. So he decided to follow Lyanis' example and punch a path through the crowd. It actually worked for him, as he saw himself edging closer to the armored turian.

"Come on!" Ascher heard the turian's voice amongst the screaming, making a bigger effort as he surged forward into the open space Lyanis had provided. The turian opened the elevator, the hatch doors rotating then parting, allowing the turian and the man to step inside the transportation vessel. Luckily the hatch doors closed quicker than they opened, allowing Lyanis to touch the number of the floor they wanted on the electronic keypad.

"You know some of the other prisoners caught fire in that bedlam you caused right?" Lyanis told him as he stood by the elevator hatch door, holding his assault rifle at the ready.

"I was counting on that. The original fires will go out in about ten seconds, so the original victims shouldn't be dead. Can't say the same for the others who caught fire without me directly causing it," Ascher explained, feeling slightly guilty for the prisoners that caught fire from him indirectly. "It's only a matter of time before they notice that we're gone, though."

"I'm aware of that. That's why I'm giving you this," Lyanis replied, reaching a silver hand into his belt, pulling out a hand cannon and handing it to the orange and black clad man.

Ascher took the gun with a little bit of shock. He wasn't sure why he was shocked. He guessed he'd just be relying on his Fire Dominion like he did for the distraction. Plus the fact that he hadn't used a handgun in a little while. But he wasn't going to let that happen. So he brought the heavy pistol closer to his face to get a better look at it, feeling the weight of it in one hand, then feeling its weight when he supported it with both hands. He closed one eye and pointed the gun forward, pretending to aim at the closed elevator hatch. The grip of the gun felt comfortable, the barrel nice and light, balancing out the heavier weight of the the handle to give the hand cannon a nice, comfortable weight.

"Thank you," Ascher said genuinely, pretending to shoot a bullet at the elevator hatch. "You trust me enough to believe I wouldn't sell you out?"

Lyanis stared at him for a moment.

"Well, I didn't have that thought in my head until now, so thanks for that," Lyanis responded, upset at the new doubt his friend just put in his head.

"I'd never sell you out. I lost a friend of mine once; I _will not_ let that happen again," Ascher said in a dead serious tone, almost protectively. This caused Lyanis to question what Ascher meant by this, but only for a moment.

"That's good to hear. Don't know what I'd do if you weren't here," the turian replied, his smile audible in his voice.

A few moments later, the elevator doors opened, and the two walked had access to the cargo bay.

Lyanis was somewhat expecting a whole group of guards to be waiting outside the elevator hatch. There was a group of guards waiting for them, but they were positioned behind a few stacks of crates scattered around the docking bay. But the moment the hatch opened, the guards opened fire, causing Lyanis to press himself against the elevator wall, Ascher following suit. One guard had an SMG, two of them had rifles it sounded like, and the fourth had a handgun.

Ascher held the hand cannon the turian guard gave him up next to his head as he waited for the guards to stop. Lyanis cradled his assault rifle tightly against his chest as the bullets flew. A few seconds later, the gunfire ceased. The two friends heard nothing at first. Then Ascher listened closely, hearing quiet footsteps nearing the elevator. He nodded at Lyanis, quickly turning the corner and squeezing off a shot the moment he came into full view of the guards. He had hit an approaching guard right in the skull before ducking behind a stack of different sized crates.

Upon hearing the thump of a body hitting the metal floor of the docking bay, Lyanis stepped out, only to be yanked down by Ascher.

"I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't get yourself killed," Ascher said as the opposing guards resumed their fire, aiming at the steel crates the man and the turian were hiding behind.

"Don't worry, I won't. What do you suppose we do about those other three shooting at us?" Lyanis asked his friend.

In response, Ascher popped his head up to see the opposing rifle wielding guard did the same. The guard took a shot at him, but just missed Ascher as he quickly ducked, then popped his head back up. Right before the guard could fire off another shot at the prisoner, Ascher put a bullet through the human guard's skull. Right between his eyes too.

"Make that two. And you're a turian right? Aren't you supposed to be trained for this?" Ascher reminded him, remembering the turian race's military superiority.

"I didn't exactly do the best in boot camp," Lyanis admitted, which didn't do anything to reassure Ascher.

Ascher rolled his eyes and hopped over the crate he was hiding behind, despite his friend's protests. While the guard to his right reloaded his rifle, Ascher hopped over the crate the handgun wielding guard was hiding behind. The guard got up and whipped Ascher across the face with his smaller handgun, sending Ascher to the ground. Before Ascher got a shot off, the guard blew his right kneecap with his hand cannon at nearly point-blank range, eliciting a scream from the prisoner. While he may have been trained to deal with gratuitous amounts of pain, getting your knee blown out close range with a handgun still hurt. A lot. Blood poured from the wound as the guard raised his gun to shoot Ascher's other knee, only to have Lyanis blow his brains out. Ascher then turned his attention to the rifle-toting guard, who was about to kill Lyanis, except Lyanis shot that guard before he could do anything. The guard slumped to the floor as Lyanis hopped over the crates to get to his crippled friend.

"Are you okay?" Lyanis called as he made his way over to his friend, removing his helmet to get a better look at his friend's injury. The turian grimaced at the sight of the badly-bleeding gunshot wound. At the range from which Ascher took the shot, his kneecap was definitely shattered. From his friend's moans of pain, the turian could tell that Ascher was suffering.

The wound hadn't even been there a full minute, and dark crimson blood already covered the majority of the prisoner's shin. The bullet hole might as well have been spurting blood, considering how much blood was already on Ascher's shin. Heck, there was even blood starting to pool around Ascher's foot. The wound was that bad. So, Lyanis took Ascher's hand cannon in one hand, then picked up the prisoner bridal style as his wild-haired head against the turian's breastplate. Lyanis looked down at the smaller man with urgent worry, Ascher sharing the turian's gaze with one of pained suffering.

Ascher had never seen his friend without his helmet on, since it was basically mandatory for all the prison guards to wear helmets while on the job. Lyanis' face plating had a very dark brown color, accented very well by his unique dark green face paint. The dried paint formed a complex design that streaked all over his face. One streak started in a point in the middle of his upper face plate with thin downward-facing crescent resting above it, curving downward and out to both ends of his forehead, you could call it, with two streaks going up to the back of his head, one sprouting from the right side of the streak as well as the left. Next there were the two grooves in the turian's nose that were filled with the paint, followed by a thicker streak on either side of his nose that fanned outward the closer it got to the edge of his face, as well as two more streaks that sprouted from the bottom-middle side of the mirroring streaks that curved inward and down to the top edge of his mouth. The face paint was completed by a simple dark green arc resting near the bottom of his chin plate.

But what Ascher really liked about his friend's face was his pair of peridot green eyes. There was such a sharp contrast between his plate coloring and his eye coloring, it was perfect. Ascher almost forgot he was in a hellish amount of pain. Almost.

"I'll be fine… I hope," Ascher grunted out in a strangled voice as the taller, larger turian carried him. He looked down at his knee, taking his blood drenched hand off the wound for a millisecond to assess the damage, immediately slapping his wet palm back down onto the fresh wound. He cried out in pained regret after doing so. The wound was bad. It was really, really bad. A wound this bad needed at least a little bit of treatment before his rapid cellular regeneration could kick in. If he didn't get that treatment soon, and due to the severe nature of the wound, he might need an amputation.

Lyanis carried his injured friend over to the ship, blood trickling from his friend's bullet wound onto his arm, then dripping onto the floor. He boarded the cargo ship to find that the pilots were cowering in the cockpit. He shot and killed the both of them, tossing their bodies outside the ship before laying Ascher down in the navigator's seat in the cockpit. Then, taking the hand cannon he'd originally given to Ascher, he closed the door to the ship. But as it was closing itself, he reached out with the hand cannon and shot the button on the remote next to the airlock hatch that released the airlock. Lyanis yanked his arm back inside as the ship door closed, hopping into the pilot's seat as the airlock opened. He fired up the ship's engines, the gigantic box of a cargo ship rising off the ground as he did, then punched the accelerator, blasting out of the prison ship forever. They'd actually done it.

Ascher was in so much pain at the moment. His knee was still bleeding, but had slowed down a little bit since they escaped the prison. Lyanis had put the ship on autopilot so he could search for a med kit. Tears of pain rolled down Ascher's cheeks, the first time he'd cried in ages. In years to be exact. He remembered back when he was a child in an unstable home. He was only around 7, but his life still sucked. His dad was an alcoholic, his mom was a drug addict. They were poor, since his parents decided to spend their money on things they deemed more important than basic necessities. When his mom was high, she was carefree. But she was carefree to the point where she didn't care about the fact that her husband was beating her son daily.

At the time, it really made him question why his parents had him in the first place. That question was answered on his tenth birthday, when his dad told him that he was a mistake. Ascher didn't want to believe it, so he asked his mom. When she wasn't high of course. And to his horror, his mom confirmed that Ascher was indeed a mistake.

And their house was a mess. There were large piles of broken bottles and cigarette butts everywhere you looked, rotting food in the refrigerator, leaks in the pipes, as well as paint peeling off the walls. It was probably one of the best decisions of his life to run away when he did. At least the foster home treated him better than his parents ever did.

"Hey, I finally found some medi-gel. It should stop the bleeding and ease the pain, as well as help your wound heal faster," Lyanis said as he swung the seat around, opening the red box with the white plus on it after he did. He pulled out a cloth first, which he used to mop up the blood that caked Ascher's right lower leg. Once the cloth was completely covered in blood, Lyanis threw it aside, grabbing a roll of white bandages as well as a bottle of medi-gel. He set the bandage roll aside and flipped open the medi-gel bottle, squirting the clear medicine onto his hand, then looking back up at Ascher. "Ready?"

Ascher gulped and nodded, gripping the armrest to brace himself for the coming pain. Lyanis began rubbing the cold gel around the slowly bleeding wound, Ascher gritting his teeth while vice gripping the armrest, not expecting the harsh stinging sensation the gel provided when applied to his wounded flesh.

An agonizing couple minutes later, the bleeding stopped once Lyanis had finished with the gel. He grabbed the white bandage roll and started to gingerly wrap the soft bandage around the Ascher's injured knee. A couple of minutes and half a roll of bandages later, Lyanis tied the bandages down, the soft material pressing the medi-gel into Ascher's wound. The man grimaced slightly, the pain ever-so-slowly dying down.

"There we go," Lyanis said as he breathed a sigh of relief, sitting back to remove his metallic gloves. "Feel any better?"

Ascher nodded as he too let out a sigh of relief. "The pain is dying down. Slowly, but surely."

"That's good," the turian smiled, something Ascher hadn't seen in a long time. The way turians smiled was obviously different from humans. They had mandibles, almost every other species had lips. So when turians smiled, their mandibles by on both sides of their jaw moved outward slightly. The movement was small, but it was still noticeable.

"I owe you twice now. First you lend me your hand cannon and now you treat my bullet wound. For the second time today, thank you Lyanis," Ascher said with a slight blush. He didn't know why he was blushing. Maybe it was because he was finally starting to appreciate Lyanis and their friendship. They hadn't known each other for more than a few months, but Ascher felt like he could trust Lyanis with anything.

"You're welcome, Ascher," Lyanis replied, chuckling at the sight of his friend blushing. He was relieved that his friend was going to be okay. Befriending the man in front of him really helped him get through the tougher days at Purgatory. He didn't have to do it often, but he was occasionally required to beat a prisoner. It wasn't something he enjoyed doing. He hated it, and he always felt really bad after the beating was over.

"Y'know something I noticed?" Ascher said after a few moments of silence.

"What?" the turian responded as he got up off the dark metallic floor of the cockpit, only to sit back down in the pilot seat.

"I've never seen you without your helmet on," Ascher observed, swiveling around to look out the cockpit window behind him.

Lyanis considered this for a moment, thinking back to when he first met the man beside him. He was wearing his helmet then. There was a time when his helmet's visor had stopped working, and he had sent it to get repaired. But that arrived back to him before he talked to Ascher later during recess. "I think you're right."

"Yeah. Nice facial markings, I like the design," Ascher commented as he swiveled his chair to the left to get a better look at his friend's face. "Now were you born with those markings, or is that some kind of face paint?"

"Face paint," the turian clarified, swiveling around to look at his friend after putting the ship on autopilot, course set for the Hourglass Nebula Relay. "I was born in the Gothis Colony of my homeworld, Palaven. Turians get their face paint when they first join boot camp, or when they come of age if we choose to stay a civilian.

"And thank you, I personally think this face paint design is the most creative," Lyanis said with a smile, the mandibles on both sides of his face parting that little bit.

"It definitely looks cooler than any of the other face paint designs I've seen on other turians, that's for sure," Ascher said with a smile, swiveling back to look out the front window, watching the stars race by. He hadn't been in a spaceship in a while, so he hadn't realized how much he missed it.

What he loved about space travel so much was watching the stars go by, as well as speaking with his friends. But all that changed when he woke up next to the dead body of one of his best friends, Tobias Wright. The night previous, he had been partying with all of his friends, and had gone back to Tobias' apartment at the Citadel with the other man. The both of them had gotten very drunk, and hailed a cab back to Tobias' apartment complex since Ascher was between homes at the time. All Ascher remembered was having a stupid conversation with Tobias about Tobias' sense of fashion, all up until they reached his apartment, at which point Ascher blacked out. The next morning, he was in Tobias' bed next to him. Except he woke up next to a dead Tobias and a bloody knife on the nightstand beside him.

He spent the next couple of hours after that trying to clean his blood-stained shirt, having a panic attack, trying to figure out how to break the news to Cyrus and Roxie, having another panic attack, then getting the heck out of the apartment complex to take a walk and figure out how he should go about breaking the news. After changing shirts. What he didn't count on was Cyrus and Roxie checking on Tobias' apartment to see what happened to him. The kind of alien that Ascher was was half related to the type of alien Cyrus, Roxie, and Tobias were. Cyrus and Roxie were soldiers from the planet Luxion, a world with a race of people very similar to humans. Tobias was a military defector from the planet Vangyre, which was at war with Luxion. Luckily the two planets didn't know about or have a Mass Relay near them. That would be really bad.

In addition to this tragedy, Cyrus, Roxie, and Tobias had fairly recently learned about Ascher's criminal past as a hitman. Fairly recently meant a few months prior to that incident. So the brother and sister were fairly quick to call C-Sec on him, even though he'd tried his hardest to prove to them that he'd changed. It wasn't enough though.

"Hey, you doing okay over there? You've gone pretty quiet for a while," Lyanis asked his friend, his tone brimming with worry, his face showing the same emotion.

"Oh yeah, just zoned out for a second," Ascher smiled, trying to dispel the turian's worry.

"Alright," Lyanis said as he turned his attention back to the pilot controls. "Well we're nearing the Mass Relay, so get ready for the jump."

"Do you have the course set for the Omega Nebula?" Ascher asked the turian.

"Yes," Lyanis replied. "So what are we going to do about your knee once we get to Omega?"

"Considering my rapid cellular regeneration, my knee should be mostly healed by the time we get to Omega," the brown haired man said. "Specifically, the bullet will slowly be pushed out of my knee, and the hole will regenerate. There'll probably still be some pain though."

"Thank you for that graphic image," Lyanis said, disgusted by the thought of a gunshot wound pushing the bullet out on its own, then proceeding to close itself.

"Yep," Ascher responded, smiling at his friend's disgust.

Pretty soon the both of them could see the nearing Relay. Lyanis pulled up a holomap of the galaxy to make sure that he had a course set for the Omega Nebula, which he did. Ascher strapped himself in with the seat harness, pulling a buckle across his lap after adjusting his position. Now comfortable and braced for the Relay jump, Ascher nodded to the turian next to him. Lyanis followed the sign of confirmation and pulled up next to the Relay, charging the cargo ship forward. The Mass Relay core energy arced toward and connected with the ship as it sped by, launching it out of the nebula at great speed, like an athlete reeling their arm back to launch a football for a Hail Mary.

Lyanis was pressed back into his seat, as was Ascher, though he kept a pair of arms stiff and connected to the navigation wheel. A long 5 seconds later, the two reached the Omega Nebula and decelerated to a much slower speed. The turian breathed a sigh of relief, quickly shaking out his now very sore arms from the intense stress they were just put through.

Ascher undid the restraints, opening and closing his hands after death-gripping the metal torso restraints during the jump. He then grabbed the buckle with one hand, holding the belt in the other as he pressed the release button with his thumb. He gently separated the belt from the buckle and set both at his sides, raking his fingers through his tangled and tousled hair, trying to clear the tangible tangles out of it. He only succeeded in removing a few knots from his hair, taking his hand off of his head since pulling at the other knots caused him great pain.

In the distance, the both of them caught sight of the giant metallic jellyfish that was Omega. It was really tiny, just a spec of dust compared compared to the ocean of stars and other planets surrounding it. So Lyanis set the coordinates on the holomap, pushing the cargo ship forward, slowly nearing the station.

"So what are we going to do about weapons?" Lyanis asked as he focused on getting to Omega without any issues.

"What?" Ascher responded confusedly.

"You talked about starting a merc group of our own," Lyanis reminded him.

"Oh yeah! That. Well, you have your assault rifle, and you're hanging onto that hand cannon you gave me earlier," Ascher replied, remembering his words from his conversation with Lyanis a few days ago. "Well, merc group is kind of a loose term. I was thinking more along the lines of screwing with other merc groups, getting some friends, and helping Omega become at least a slightly better place than when we arrive."

Lyanis considered this for a moment. He was fine with going back to being a merc, dispensing targets with a few gunshots. It'd be better than the torture he had to sometimes perform on the prisoners at Purgatory. But if he focused on using skills to help other people that needed, like the ideals practically beaten into him during boot camp, he felt better about doing that.

"That sounds nice. Definitely better than the beatings I had to perform at Purgatory. I didn't have to do very many luckily, even though I worked over there for 3 years," Lyanis said, agreeing with the idea of a merc group that was more like a vigilante group. He'd be uneasy about doing it if it was in a place like the Citadel, since they already had C-Sec. But Omega didn't have C-Sec. They had Aria T'Loak and a lot of merc groups. Like mercenaries that worked for Blue Suns. Oh yeah. He just remembered that. Crap.

"Ascher, do you know that mercenaries that work for Blue Suns operate out of Omega?" the turian asked his friend, worry creeping into his voice as he asked the question.

"Oh," Ascher said. "No. I did not know that. What do you think the chances are of Kuril guessing we'd be heading to Omega?"

Lyanis thought about it. In the years that he had known and spoken to Kuril, the Warden had mentioned Omega very few times. That much was reassuring. But it was also likely that Kuril had contacts in many places across the galaxy, being a member of Blue Suns and all that. So that made it likely that he would send out word across the galaxy that a turian prison guard aided a valuable prisoner in his escape attempt, and to be on watch for those two.

Maybe Kuril wouldn't remember what his face looked like, having only seen Lyanis' face twice. Once when Lyanis first signed up, and a second time when Lyanis' helmet visor broke a couple years later. Considering that, Lyanis deemed it unlikely that Warden Kuril would remember him. But then he remembered that Kuril had the list of all of his employees on his holotop.

"You might need this when we arrive at Omega," Lyanis decided as he broke away from his thoughts, handing Ascher the hand cannon he gave him earlier.

"Why?" Ascher responded, checking the clip and emptying it into his hand to see how many bullets were left. Having set the empty clip and the rest of the hand cannon on his lap, he picked up the bullets one by one between his index finger and thumb, passing them to the other hand. Finally he picked up the clip in his free hand and transferred the bullets back into the clip. There were three bullets left in the clip.

"It is very possible that Kuril will have contacted all possible locations containing Blue Suns mercenaries to be on the watch for us. I'm not saying that there'll be BS mercs waiting for us when we land, but we may run into some on our way into Omega once we do land," Lyanis explained, glancing down at his belt to make sure he had extra clips for his rifle.

"Great," Ascher said as he swiveled his chair around and got up, limping towards the back of the ship.

"Where are you going?" Lyanis asked him, seeing his friend get up out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm going to see if the pilots brought along any spare armor," Ascher called as he made his way into the back of the ship to where the cargo was held. Once he got to the back of the ship, he found that there was more being delivered than just a new batch of prisoners. He made his way over to a steel crate and opening it. What he found inside was a new batch of armor, this crate containing human armor.

Out of curiosity, he delved into the other crates in the cargo hold. The ones near the crate of new human armor contained new armor for the rest of the species that worked there. Turian armor, batarian armor, vorcha armor, and even krogan armor, even though Ascher hadn't recalled ever seeing a krogan guard at that prison. There were plenty of krogan prisoners, but he didn't see any krogan guards. Other crates contained shipments of weapons and food for the employees. There was an abundance of hand cannons, pistols, rifles, SMGs, and heavy assault weapons like grenades, flash and explosive alike, and heavy guns Ascher had no idea existed.

So, he first went to the shipment of human armor and found a suit in his size, taking a few minutes to slip off his prison gear in exchange for the armor. Then once he'd slipped on the human armor, he hooked the helmet to his belt and went shopping in the artillery section. He already had the hand cannon, so he just grabbed a few extra corresponding clips for that to start out. He then moved on to grab himself an assault rifle, checking out each one before settling on the Gorgon X by Cerberus Skunkworks. He wasn't big on SMGs so he decided to opt that out for a sniper. Specifically the Pulse X. Then he decided to take a look to see if there were any handguns better than the one Lyanis gave him, which was an M-5 Phalanx. After searching for a few minutes and turning up nothing, he decided to stick with the handgun given to him. Finally, he moved to the selection of heavy guns that were being shipped. Ice really wasn't his thing, but he had one exception: the M-622 Avalanche. The moment he saw it in the crate, he snatched it and hooked it to his back. He was ready for whatever Blue Suns threw at him now.

Lyanis had been flying alone for about 15 minutes now, and was starting to wonder what Ascher was doing back in the cargo hold. That was until he heard footsteps come up behind him.

"Finally! I was wondering what you were…" Lyanis trailed off, swiveling around to see his friend decked out in full Blue Suns armor, clips for different guns strapped to his belt. The same with grenades strapped diagonally down his torso. "Where the hell did you get all of that?"

Ascher, despite his hurting knee, had one of the biggest grins he'd ever had. "This ship wasn't just transporting prisoners. It is _ballistic wonderland_ back there."

Lyanis just stared at him for a moment before speaking again. "Do you know how to pilot a ship?"

"Yes."

Lyanis was back there faster than the Flash on cocaine. Ascher took the pilot's seat as they neared Omega. He guided the ship at a medium pace towards the space station, dodging gracefully past the asteroids that surrounded the station gracefully as they neared one of Omega's docking bays. Despite the fact that Ascher hadn't flown a ship in a few months, he still knew how to make this fat box of a cargo ship dance, even though it wasn't his old ship. He knew the proper distance to keep between oncoming projectiles, which involved purposefully dodging them by the littlest bit of space.

Once they were in the clear, Lyanis came walking out of the cargo hold in fresh gear and a new helmet, the starlight outside gleaming off of the freshly polished armor. Lyanis took off his helmet and smiled at his similarly clad friend.

"So, how do I look?" Lyanis asked Ascher, holding up his arms and slowly spinning around to show off the new armor, as well as his choice of guns.

"You look like you're ready to kick some Blue Suns ass," Ascher replied, smiling back at the turian. "We're about 5 minutes out. Be ready for anything."

The turian nodded as he sat down in the navigation seat, folding his arms across his chest and relaxing into the seat. Ascher guided the rectangular prism of a cargo ship into one of the docking bays, landing a little bit ways away from a small batarian ship. He didn't see anyone waiting for them, so that comforted him a little bit. They landed softly, immediately swiveling around in their chairs and walking to the side of the ship. Well, Lyanis walked and Ascher limped after him. Lyanis punched the button that opened the side hatch, pulling out the extra M-5 Phalanx that he took from the cargo hold, Ascher doing the same. Once the hatch was open, the two walked out into the new environment, ready for whatever came their way.

 **Definitely utilizing what days of summer I have left to my best ability. Plus this is a record for me. Usually takes me a month to write a chapter around this long. I definitely tried harder on this one than I did on the last one, so yay me. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Or flame me. Again, I honestly don't care if I get flamed. Anyway, if anyone reads this, constructive criticism will be welcomed with open arms. I hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and I hope to have the next one out soon.**

 **Bye everyone :)**


	3. New Armor

**Chapter 3: New Armor**

Lyanis and Ascher stood in the elevator as it traveled up to the main level of Omega, neither friend speaking to the other. It had been less than a day since the turian had helped the former prisoner escape the Blue Suns run space prison, Purgatory. Ascher leaned against the wall of the elevator, facing Lyanis as they stood apart. Ascher drummed his armored fingers against the silver bar he leaned back against, folding his right leg over his left to take the weight off of it. Lyanis leaned his taller frame on the opposite wall with his arms across his chest, staring at his friend's right leg concernedly.

"Are you sure you won't need any more medical attention?" Lyanis asked quietly, thinking out loud.

"What?" Ascher looked up from staring down at the chrome floor, having been lost in his own thoughts. He'd been mentally asking himself how long it would be until they ran into actual Blue Suns mercs, and what they would do once they did. Would they kill the mercs? Would they just incapacitate them? He didn't know what Lyanis would want to do. He knew the turian had grown to hate his job at the space prison, but he didn't know if he'd worked for Blue Suns elsewhere, or how he felt about the group altogether. Although, he would definitely ask.

"I was just asking if your leg would need any more medical attention," Lyanis clarified, remnants of worried scattered across his face, just like the broken parts of a crashed boat being scattered across an ocean.

"It'll be fine Li, you can stop worrying," Ascher laughed, thinking the turian was worrying over nothing. Which in this situation, he was. He could feel that his knee was already nearly healed, only a bad soreness left. That was the only thing that kept him limping.

"It's not funny Ascher, you could've been hurt really bad! No, you _were_ hurt really bad, and you were lucky I got you out of there when I did," Lyanis replied, his worry refusing to leave his face. If anything, his worry was getting worse.

Ascher's smile fell, considering what his friend said. He may have been the product of a test tube, a near-perfect representation of two races mixed together, but that didn't make him invincible. Not by a long shot. Sure he was strong, fast, could control and manipulate fire to his will, but he was still vulnerable. The fatal flaw with his rapid regeneration was that it was built around taking smaller hits. Cuts, bruises, burns. But the more severe the damage got, the slower the regeneration would be. Yes, it would always be faster than most races, but it wouldn't always save him.

"I… I'm sorry Li. Yeah, I'll be fine this time, but I need to be more careful next time. I will be more careful next time. It's just that I haven't had a close call like that in years. I got cocky," Ascher admitted, remembering his first close call. It was far worse than his recent bullet wound. Heck, that bullet wound looked like a small bruise compared to what happened ten years ago.

To be more specific, fifteen years ago, he was shot in the face. It was a part of his last hit, located on Earth. He'd taken a job to take out a corrupt CEO of a medi-gel distribution firm. The CEO was corrupt because he wasn't just selling medi-gel. He was also selling big name drugs like Red Sand and Hallux. The way he'd pull this off would be by sorting out orders of the drugs from companies that helped him and the companies that didn't. For the ones that didn't help him distribute the drugs, he'd charge them normal price for the amount of medi-gel being shipped, as well as shipment itself. For the ones that knew about his operation and would help him, he'd use his modified shipping trucks to ship in the extra drugs. The shipping containers would have the normal crates of medi-gel packages, but the crates would also have some of the illegal drugs stashed at the bottom of each crate, hidden under the original packages of medi-gel.

Ascher was assigned to take out the corrupt CEO who ran the drug ring as he was leaving his building for his car. What Ascher wasn't told was that the CEO used to be a trained Alliance Army officer, who carried a firearm on him at all times. Ascher always used a gun to kill his targets. As the CEO was loading his things into the trunk of his car, Ascher was coming up behind him to shoot him in the back of his skull, when the CEO caught him by surprise. He whipped around, gun in hand, and shot Ascher one time in the face. The CEO called the police, who called an ambulance, who rushed Ascher to the hospital. Lucky for him, the bullet ripped through his cheek, missed his brain, and just barely missed his neck. He made a full recovery, and then he spent eight years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted murder, as well as giving up the man who sent him on that job.

The wound left behind a very faint scar, whereas he imagined his knee would look good as new once it fully healed. The point was that the bullet he took to the face came that close to killing him, where his knee injury could've just gotten him an amputation.

"Good. We'll need to be more careful anyways with Blue Suns after us," Lyanis said, the worry seeming to drain from his voice like rainwater down a storm drain.

A few moments later, the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. The turian walked out cautiously, his friend limping behind him. It looked like they walked out into a market area, as there were a few shops lining the walls as well as people frequenting those shops. The marketplace itself wasn't in the best shape. The walls were a light moldy brown color, dimly lit by huge bonfires scattered throughout the area, as well as the occasional fluorescent bar hanging from the ceiling. There were people of different races everywhere, especially the shopkeepers. There was a turian leaning against the bonfire barrier as he talked to a salarian, there was an elcor shopkeeper selling spare ship parts, a sick-looking quarian sitting against the wall. There were some armed vorcha lurking in some of the alleyways, as well as armed batarians passing through the area.

Ascher ever so slowly started walking normally again as the he and Lyanis roamed through the marketplace. The dark brown turian even let out a sigh of relief when he saw his friend walking normally again. For a while, the only noise produced was the quiet banter of the aliens around them, the soft crackling of the large bonfire light sources, and the clinking of their armor as the man and the turian walked along.

"So, where are we going to set up shop?" Lyanis asked his smaller friend as they walked out into an open area, a large building with a hot pink-glowing sign. The sign read 'Afterlife', with similar LED lights above it flashing in patterns of asari women. There was a packed line a few meters away from the front steps of the club guarded by an elcor bouncer. There was a man in the front of the line insisting that he had scheduled a meeting with a woman named Aria and that she was expecting. The elcor countered that statement by saying it was dubious about that, and asked why Aria would want to see him.

"I dunno," Ascher said as he caught himself staring at the club entrance, and the lack of people entering. "Who's Aria?"

"Really Ash?" the brown and green turian responded, arching a brow at the smaller human-looking man.

"What?" he said.

"You want us to go to Omega without knowing who Aria is? Aria T'Loak? You seriously don't know who she is?"

Ascher just stared at him.

"Ok. Let me explain to you just who Aria T'Loak is," the turian sighed after holding his face in his hands. "Aria T'Loak is the unofficial biotic asari ruler of Omega. She's the one who keeps all of the other merc gangs in check, and keeps the citizens of Omega relatively safe."

Ascher squinted at the turian as he mulled this over for a moment. "So she's kind of like an unofficial dictator."

The turian shook his head. "Let me rephrase. There's one rule you need to remember while on Omega. 'Don't screw with Aria T'Loak.'"

"I think I get it then."

"So I can stop explaining to you in grotesque detail?"

"Yes."

Eventually, the two of them were able to find an abandoned warehouse in the tenements of Omega to set up their base. Over a pretty short period of time, they were able to accumulate some tech and stockpile some weapons in this new base of theirs. They were able to pull this off by posing as Blue Suns mercs when they would infiltrate Blue Suns strongholds, usually doing this to raid them of their weapons. Not all of their weapons, but the ones that'd come in the shipments they received. And they didn't just save the weapons and materials raids for Blue Suns. Ascher and Lyanis were able to hit Eclipse and Blood Pack as well, taking the weapons, armor, and and medi-gel shipments with not too much difficulty.

Ascher especially took extra care in his tactics during the raids, taking the slow and steady route instead of the aggressive-let's-hope-I-don't-die-while-doing-this route, much to Lyanis' relief. Plus this worked out much better than Ascher hoped, only having to deal with a few bullet wounds that weren't even that serious along the way.

Pretty soon after that, they moved to raiding the merc bands of their drug shipments as well as stealing their money. The money wasn't necessary until the merc bands focused less on the weapon shipments and more on the drug shipments, using that as a safeguard against having their weapons stolen. Lyanis and Ascher had originally been selling a quarter of their weapons to some of Aria's troops, after having gotten noticed by her and assuring the asari they wouldn't break Omega's number one rule. The two of them still raided the weapons shipments, but started doing this after they noticed a significant lack of them.

Once Blue Suns caught onto their infiltration tactic, Lyanis had bought some paint to customize their armor. Amber, dark grey, and black, as requested by Ascher, he took care of the armor design. He took great pleasure in asking the turian to remove his armor so that he could take care of the paint job. This earned him a look from the taller turian who asked him to wait while he went out and bought some clothes before he stripped down in front of the hybrid.

"Aw c'mon Li! Aren't you wearing anything under that armor?" Ascher teased the older turian.

"I'm only wearing enough clothing to cover my extremities," Lyanis deadpanned, folding his arms indignantly. "I will not walk around like that in the same vicinity as you."

"Come on Li, I really won't mind," Ascher assured him, uncaring of how the turian viewed his advancements. He viewed the two of them as friends, yes, but he also really wouldn't mind seeing his friend without clothing on. To an extent at least.

"I thought you told me you were only into women," Lyanis countered, a confident smirk spreading itself across his face as one of his mandibles lifted slightly.

"And you actually believed me?" Ascher grinned. That part was marginally true. He did fancy women, but they weren't the only gender he fancied; or preferred for that matter. "Yes, I do like women. But what purposefully didn't tell you was that I like men more."

Lyanis' smirk disappeared instantly, a blush taking its place. The hybrid eyed his friend's blush in mild curiosity, finding he enjoyed the look of the light brown on his friend's cheek plates against the dark brown of the rest of his face. But now it was Ascher's turn to smirk, watching in amusement as his embarrassed friend's mandibles fluttered.

The turian turned his head away from the hybrid, willing with all his might for his mandibles to stop fluttering as he attempted to compose himself. He didn't enjoy being on the receiving end of this sort of treatment. Usually he'd treat Ascher this way, and would be the one enjoying himself at the sight of his tormented friend. But now he'd unintentionally given Ascher the advantage on this one, letting the tables be turned on him.

Then the thought game into his mind of Ascher's comment. Yes Ascher did like women, but he liked men more. Did this mean anything? Sure the two of them had only known each other about four months going on five, but it also felt like they were already pretty close. For Lyanis, he'd never been attracted to any women he'd met. He'd just assumed that meant that he hadn't found the right one yet, having ignored the fact that he found men more appealing than women, even finding himself slightly attracted to some of the men he'd met in the past. Physically, not romantically anyway.

But screw it. He'd see what'd happen.

"Fine Ash. But you owe me for this," Lyanis said as he started to take off his armor in front of the hybrid, tossing the armor on the hard floor.

"What is that? Three favors I owe you now?" Ascher asked him. "First you help me out of that hell hole prison, then you fix up my knee, now we're not even dating and I've gotten you to take off your shirt? Or armor rather?"

"Yes. Now get on with it, it's cold in here," Lyanis said as he got the rest of his armor off, standing with his arms crossed while he wore some type of tight-fitting turian boxers, clearly unamused by Ascher's teasing.

Ascher got serious, setting to work on the turian's armor. He started off by spraying the majority of the arms with the dark grey paint, save the fingers, which he sprayed black. He'd even gotten his hands on a paint brush to take care of the finer details, which mainly included the logo. The logo he decided to go with was a pair of warhammers crossed in the shape of a capital v, with the heads of the hammers set ablaze. He did this with the amber, making the torso and leg armor the jet black, leaving the arms and the boots dark grey. Finally, he made the helmets predominantly amber, but made fire designs with the dark grey and the black.

He was done with Lyanis' armor about an hour later, pleasing the dark brown turian greatly. The turian graciously accepted his new armor, slipping it on with ease. Lyanis loved the way the newly designed armor shined in the warehouse light, as well as the fact that he didn't look like he was Blue Suns anymore.

Lyanis held his helmet under his arm, staring at Ascher with a smirk. This confused the hybrid, causing him to arch a brow and turn his head at his companion, trying to understand the implication behind the look he was receiving. The dark brown turian hadn't teased him, yet, so he couldn't find the reason behind this otherwise unprovoked look.

"Any reason you're smirking at me the way you are?" the hybrid asked the turian, the confused look he had remaining constant.

"I undressed so you could paint my armor. It's time to reciprocate," Lyanis replied, his smirk growing bigger as Ascher's face changed to a look of horror.

"No," Ascher replied, short and concise, his face reverting back to a neutral look.

"Nuh-uh. You have to," the turian grinned.

"No. Not with you in the room. Or at least not when you can see me," Ascher countered defensively, stress causing his voice to rise in volume a little bit.

"Come on Ascher, I did it for you and you had your laugh. It's my turn."

Ascher started to get really uncomfortable, this emotion almost showing on his face. It's not like he wasn't physically fit. He was and then some. In fact, it wasn't his body mass that bothered him. It was something else. Something that he didn't want the turian to see.

"No," Ascher repeated.

"If you don't take off the armor, I'll do it for you," Lyanis threatened.

That could make it even worse.

"Fine. Just promise me you won't say anything," Ascher finally complied.

"I will do no such thing," the turian smiled.

"It's not funny Lyanis!" Ascher said, a little louder than he meant to.

This caught the brown turian off guard. He didn't make this much of a fuss when he was told to take off his armor. What in the galaxy could be making his friend so uneasy right now? It worried him. He'd never seen Ascher get so stressed like this.

"Ok, jeez, I won't."

With that, Ascher finally started to remove his armor. He started with the upper body armor, deciding to get the most difficult part out of the way. He undid the buckles on his chest plating, removing it and tossing it on the floor along with his arm plating and gloves, all of them hitting the hard floor with an echoing clink. He sighed, relieved that the worst of it was over. Now he just had to remove the leg armor.

"Spirits, Ascher," the hybrid heard the turian gasp. Great. This was exactly what he wanted to avoid.

The turian was shocked. Dark red stitching scars, scars from cuts that didn't quite heal, bullet scars, and welts peppered the hybrid's back. His arms were wearing lines of burn and laceration scars like one would have sleeve of tattoos, and his chest and stomach were covered top to bottom in stitching scars, welts and bullet scars. "Do those hurt?"

"They used to. Like hell," Ascher replied quietly after letting out a sigh.

The turian walked up to his smaller friend who hung his head in shame and hugged him. The smaller man, really only smaller by about half a head, folded his arms and rested his cheek against the warm armor of his friend, breathing in the musty smell of freshly dried paint.

"Did all this happen to you at Purgatory?" Lyanis asked Ascher in a soft voice, pulling out of the hug and resting his hands on the other man's shoulders.

"No," came the reply that confused and worried the turian further.

"Then where?"

Ascher remained silent for a moment before speaking. "I never told you I was a test tube did I?"

"A what?" the brown turian replied, confused.

"Test tube. I wasn't born naturally. I was created in a capsule that essentially served as a test tube," Ascher explained, looking up into the peridot pools made foggy with a mixture of confusion and worry.

"Where was this? When was this?" Lyanis asked, more questions than he knew what to do with flooding into his head like a hurricane flooding a city.

"Here's the part you might not understand," Ascher started.

"Ash, I already don't understand this," the turian assured him.

"Well, back on the planet I was created on, Vangyre, a team of scientists were trying to create the perfect soldier by splicing the DNA of their race with the DNA of a soldier from the planet they were at war with, Luxion. The goal was to breed an army of super soldiers to turn the tide in favor of the Vangels," Ascher explained, vivid memories of the lab he called home for a long while rising to the surface of his mind, just like air bubbles would do in water.

The dark brown turian slowly nodded, taking in the information. Although, he was still confused, having never heard of either of the planets Ascher talked about.

"The scientists tried and tried, but every soldier they tried to create either came out as a malformed mutant that didn't survive past a couple days, or an outwardly perfect soldier that was very much imperfect on the inside; these soldiers had an incredibly weak immune system, and they too died within days after being born.

"But after months of modifications and further experimentation, I came along. The scientists finally were able to create a body that had a perfect physical make-up. The perfect amount of super strength that comes with being Luxionan, perfect agility and speed that comes with being a Vangel, as well as supernatural stamina that comes from both races. All that was left to give me was a Dominion, an ability shared by both species just like the stamina," Ascher said before Lyanis piped up.

"Dominion? What do you mean by that? Does it have something to do with your fire thing?" the dark brown turian furrowed his brow as he tried to make sense of all this.

The hybrid opened his hand, a fireball igniting on his palm. "Yes."

"Every Luxionan and Vangel has what's called a Dominion, where we can bend a certain force to our will. Mine is fire; I can do nearly anything I imagine with fire. Others control water, air, sound - that one is incredibly complicated - metal, space, et cetera. In addition to that, the Luxionans have incredible strength and durability. Vangels have incredible speed and agility. Both races share incredible stamina. But these skills are second rate compared to what a trained Luxionan or Vangel can do when they combine those skills with their Dominion.

"With a Dominion comes a multi-form weapon that differs for each Luxionan and Vangel. And keep in mind, these two races aren't that big on guns. They're more of a melee weapon crowd-"

"What does this have to do with you exactly?" Lyanis asked the hybrid, folding his arms and squinting at him.

"Oh yeah. Sorry. Lot of information not only about what went down at that lab, but about the two races I'm made up of. But back to talking about the lab.

"The scientists there were nice to me at first. They started with teaching me basic academic concepts, later moving on to more complicated things. Separately, the Luxionans and the Vangels have incredible intellect compared to the other races in this galaxy; basically they're like the asari if asari took steroids hourly. Since I'm what I am, I have double that intellect," Ascher continued.

"You certainly don't act like it," the turian deadpanned.

"What I make up for in academia, I severely lack compared to my combat skills, which are still pretty good as it is," Ascher countered, only realizing the turian was half serious.

"Uh-huh, sure."

" _Anyway_ , I'm really good at math, science, music, -"

"Wait-wait-wait. Music?"

"Music is VERY important to the Luxionans and Vangels. I can't emphasize that enough."

"Like I was saying, math, science, music, religion - please don't ask me about that - and history. Gods I love history.

"Then once my education was covered, the scientists started easing me into strength, agility, and flexibility training, as well as some dance since some of our fighting styles incorporate that.

"It was right around this time that the war got worse. Much worse. The Luxionans had started taking out some of the Vangel's weapon stockpiles, the same with rations for our soldiers, and supplies convoys. Not only were they destroying some of the convoys, but they were stealing from them as well. This is when the majority of the scientists started really putting the heat on me to get better so I could get out into the field, no pun intended.

"I complied, training harder and harder liked they asked me. Soon enough, I was a melee combat adept, having mastered my Dominion as well as my representative weapon, and it was time to move on to the ranged combat. I did just fine with shooting fire at the combat drones, as well as combining weapon attacks with ranged attacks. I did say that we are more of a melee weapon crowd, but there are Luxionans and Vangels that have ranged weapons as their representative weapons, hence the ranged weapon combat training.

"I was _really, really bad_ with the ranged weapons they gave me at first. The pistols, rifles, snipers, SMGs, especially the snipers and the SMGs. The fact that tensions were high didn't bode well for the scientists. Their governmental superiors expected results from the scientists, who were used to getting incredible results from me. When I wasn't performing well, they decided that they weren't doing enough to provoke results out of me. Now this was provoked in part by their martinet superiors, who apparently promised to shut down the project by killing all of the scientists if I didn't start showing results. So the scientists started verbally and sometimes even physically abusing me until I gave them good results," Ascher growled through gritted teeth, clenching his fists tightly as old anger rose to the surface of his fragile mind.

"This included calling me a worthless mistake, a waste of precious time and money, beating me, breaking my bones then healing them, electrocuting me, subjecting me to near eardrum bursting noise, and more fun stuff like that. And they continued to do as such, seeing as how I did start performing better," Ascher growled, starting to shake in equal parts anger and fear.

The turian noticed his friend look down to hide the tears that began to run down his cheeks in steady individual streams, and wrapped his arms around him once again. He shushed his traumatized and told him that everything was going to be all right as he allowed him a break from reliving his horrific past. He couldn't imagine having to live a life like that. What mortified him even more was the fact that Ascher was able to survive through that, but he was glad he did. Otherwise he wouldn't have had the friend he was comforting today. Heck, he wouldn't have had any friends at all, and would be stuck back at Purgatory.

Ascher pulled away from the turian in front of him, wiping his eyes before looking back up at his taller friend. Ascher managed to put on a soft smile, crossing his arms after running a hand through his wild hair.

"Thanks for that," the hybrid said, taking a deep breath as he was prepared to tell his friend the rest of the story.

The turian rested a two fingered hand on his friend's shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly. His mandibles expanded into a returned smile, squeezing his friend's shoulder one last time before letting go of it.

"You don't have to finish your story. Not right now anyway. I'm getting hungry," the turian remarked, his sub vocals voicing his hunger.

"Yeah. All this emotional trauma has me really hungry now," Ascher said, grabbing his under armor and his regular armor, as well as the paint can. "But I have to finish my armor first."

So he removed his leg armor and boots and set to work, not caring that he was basically doing this in a pair of boxers right next to his turian friend. Heck, he actually needed Lyanis as a reference for how he was going to paint his armor. Lyanis didn't mind. This just meant that he got to stare at the eye candy that was his friend. He could just imagine himself with Ascher, running his talons up the soft-looking skin of the man crouched in front of him. Holding him close as they would kiss… Where was he going with this? He had met Ascher only a few months ago, and now he was having romantic fantasies about the two of them?

"Aaaand done," Ascher said as he set the armor down, breaking the turian from his thoughts. Lyanis watched as the hybrid in front of him heated up his hand until there was a soft bright orange glow emanating from his palm. The turian watched as he slowly moved his hand over the armor, quickly drying the fresh paint, the metallic smell lingering in the air. A few minutes later, the hybrid traced a finger over the newly colored armor, turning his finger face up for inspection. He found that the paint had dried completely, his finger completely dry, free of any dark grey, black, and amber paint.

He then started to put the soft yet tight under armor back on, smoothing away the wrinkles that formed in the black material with his thumbs. Lyanis watched in slight disappointment as his friend started to clothe himself again. If only he could stare at that muscular body just a little bit longer. Those strong forearms and impressive biceps, the eight pack he had going on. The toned legs, hips and lats. His friend, no, his _crush_ was built in all the right ways and the turian loved it. But he did love how the tight cloth under armor outlined the hybrid's physique, defining every muscle and curve. He let out a small sigh of contentment without thinking, but was relieved to see that his friend didn't notice.

"Don't worry, I'll have my armor on soon enough, then we can go eat," Ascher said as he slipped on the rest of his armor, misinterpreting his friend's sigh. So he did hear it. At least he got the meaning behind it wrong, Spirits knew how awkward that would be.

Lyanis gave Ascher his trademark smirk as he stood up, donning his newly colored armor. Ascher arched a brow at the smirking turian. What was with him and choosing to smirk unprovoked like this. Well the first time seemed unprovoked, but this time it seemed that way. Ascher could not think of any reason why Lyanis was smirking like he did. He usually did it when a small misfortune happened to Ascher, or when the turian knew something the hybrid didn't. Maybe that was it. Maybe the turian knew something. He didn't know what, and he certainly didn't care. He was hungry.

"So where do you want to go? Afterlife?" Ascher asked the man to his left.

"Sure. Nothing wrong with club food. Not yet anyway," Lyanis agreed, his smirk still plastered to his face. Fantasies of him and Ascher started to fill his mind. Romantic ones of course. Lyanis liked to think he wasn't a sleeze. Hopefully Ascher wasn't either.

The two of them walked out of the warehouse and down the cramped alleys that led to it. When they first found that warehouse, it was seriously beat down. The wiring needed fixing in order for there to actually be light in the warehouse, there were holes in the metallic walls. Using his welding skills, Ascher was able to melt down some of the excess guns and reform them into metallic patches for the holes, sealing them in place with his blowtorch index finger. Lyanis took care of the wiring once they were able to force their way inside, accomplished by possibly having Ascher melt a hole in one of the side walls.

Once they did manage to get inside, Ascher was able to provide a light source by setting his hand on fire. If he did it to himself, he'd be fine since it was _his_ fire. Anyway, they took a walk around, and found out the warehouse was pretty big. There was an open space at the front of the warehouse that could be used as a meeting/planning center, there was a room in the back that was a little smaller than the center room of the warehouse that they could use as a weapons locker. Those two rooms were connected by an hallway that ran through the core of the warehouse, extending a long way down left and right. There were three smaller rooms down on both sides of the right facing hallway, as well as the left facing hallway, creating a total of fourteen rooms on the ground floor of the warehouse. In what was going to be the meeting/planning center of the warehouse were a couple of busted lifts. There were also stairs that led to an upper level made from black metal grating, kind of like the catwalks in Purgatory. The upper level was the same as the lower level for the most part. There was a hallway just like there was on the ground level. There were six rooms in both ends of the upstairs hall, three on both sides of both ends of the hallway. In the weapons locker area of the warehouse, in the respective upstairs room could be a food stockpile if need be. Ascher didn't know how large his merc group would get. That is if it grew past two members.


	4. Sunshine in a White Dress

Chapter 4: Sunshine in a White Dress

When the turian and the hybrid entered the club, they were first met with a hallway with only a few people inside who talked by the left video fire display that stretched through the hallway on both walls. It was just a group of Omega citizens with a couple lone mercs; there were a couple asari, a krogan, some salarians and even a volus. Ascher was surprised to see that the volus was a merc, but felt the exact opposite to see the other merc was the krogan. He could tell the two were solo since one, Ascher had never seen a volus in a merc group. Ever. Secondly, most krogan were either mercs or pedestrians. Usually the first one though.

Lyanis noticed they got a couple looks from the group as they passed by, returning a poker faced look, the staring volus and salarian looking away once they stepped into the actual club. When they stepped into the main area, they were met with booming heavy electro, as well as the sight of asari dancers working the poles above the bar while wearing skin-tight, dark purple suits. There were people of all races sitting in the circular booths both on the ground floor and the upper floor. The turian saw a salarian talking with some asari and a human, a quarian dancing with a salarian and a krogan. Who knew the krogan danced?

Ascher observed the club with a level face, eyes scanning around the area as he saw crowds of either mixed races or crowds of lone races socializing with each other. He did notice a group of turians lining twin staircases leading up to a three way couch. On that couch sat an asari, though Ascher could only see the back of her head from where the two of them stood.

"I'm guessing that's Aria?!" Ascher asked Lyanis as he pointed at the asari on the couch, having to shout over the music.

"Yes!" Came the short response, Lyanis yelling back.

"We should find a place to sit!"

"Yeah!"

So the two of them walked around the circular center of the club, finding a couple seats at the bar, opposite to where they were standing moments earlier. Lyanis and Ascher sat down in near unison, their seat cushions sighing as the sat down on the cheap leather bar stools. The hybrid sat on the turian's right, calling over the bar tender to get him a whiskey sour, preferably made with Jameson Irish Whiskey.

"And what will you have sir?" The batarian bartender asked him, glancing at Ascher a few times before focusing his attention on the turian in front of him.

"Turian Poitin," Lyanis replied. He liked his alcohol strong, and heard that this turian version of a human brand of alcohol was one of the strongest products in the galaxy.

"Of course sir," the batarian bartender said with a nod, walking down the left side of the circular space to the dextro-amino alcohol section.

Meanwhile, after having a couple sips of his whiskey, Ascher noticed a strong burning sensation bloomed inside his chest, making a face of discomfort. He slapped his fist a couple times against the armored part of his chest, hoping to alleviate what felt like the galaxy's worst case of heartburn. Unfortunately, after he did, the burning immediately got worse as it shot into his throat. Ascher's eyes went wide before he coughed hard onto the counter at first, then into the crook of his elbow. His coughs grew louder and more phlegm filled as he slammed his other hand against the counter, drawing the attention of some of the dancers as well as other club-goers sitting in the circular booths. But what drew the attention of many more people was when Ascher accidentally knocked his drink on the ground as he stood up, the glass cup shattering loud enough for people in the upper level to hear.

Lyanis had asked his friend for about the tenth time now if he was okay, only getting more hacking in response. He looked at the counter and saw dark crimson blood spattered on the the glass surface from where Ascher had first coughed. He then focused his attention on the batarian bartender who calmly finished making Lyanis' drink and placed it in front of him.

"Here you are sir. Enjoy," the batarian bartender smiled at him before moving to clean the blood off of the counter.

An asari woman who was previously talking with a friend of hers helped Ascher up and walked him over to the booth she was sitting in, helping him to sit down as she handed him the water she was neglecting. Ascher croaked out a thank you before downing the crystal clear liquid as he held the smaller glass in a vice grip. He did cough a few more times, but they were weaker and had more time in between them. Eventually he stopped coughing, his grip on the glass softening as he set it down on the table.

"Are you going to be okay?" The asari woman asked him, placing a blue hand on his to help calm him down.

"Yeah. Thanks for the water," Ascher wheezed out as he continued to catch his breath, heaving deep breaths as the the water eased the burning in his throat and chest greatly. Eventually, there was a dull pain that faded from his chest at the speed of a snail crawl, and Ascher was fine with that.

"That's good. I was worried for a minute that you wouldn't get better," the asari smiled, her hand lingering on Ascher's before she removed it, placing it in her lap as she moved to get up.

"Hey wait," Ascher said, catching the attention of the grey eyed woman, pausing her departure from the table. "I didn't catch your name."

"Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Wynona," the asari said as her smile came back.

"Ascher. Once again, thank you for the help," Ascher smiled back, getting a familiar vibe from this woman for some reason. He didn't know why, but he just felt like he knew her somehow, even though he'd never met an asari in his life.

"Nice to meet you Ascher. Be careful around those batarians. They're a nasty bunch," Wynona advised him, her voice making a slight dip into an English accent for a millisecond, the tone change almost unrecognizable.

"I will," the hybrid said as the asari walked away. He then pushed himself up from the circular wooden table and headed towards the bar, where Lyanis was busy yelling at the batarian bartender.

"Answer me dammit!" Lyanis nearly screamed at the bartender as he slammed his fist on the glass counter, cracking it. Meanwhile the batarian bartender wasn't listening, as he was shocked to see Ascher walking up to the bar, alive and well. "What did you put in that drink?!"

Once Ascher got up to the, he arched a brow at the batarian bartender as he crossed his arms, staring at the four-eyed man expectantly. "So, you wanna tell me what was in that drink?"

"Y-You should be dead!" The batarian bartender exclaimed in shock, reaching under the counter for a steel knife, which he chucked at the hybrid. The knife was thrown by an amateur, so instead of flying straight, it flipped clumsily through the air. Ascher easily caught the steel cooking tool by the handle, his enhanced reflexes making it seem as though the air was made of molasses, the knife slowly flipping towards him. Taking the knife thrown at him, he used his still active reflexes to grab the batarian's hand with his free one and slammed it palm-first on the counter. He then stabbed the knife through the four-eyed alien's hand and into the counter, lodging it there. The batarian screamed in pain.

"If you tell me what you put in that drink, I might just take this knife out of the counter," Ascher whispered to the batarian who was busy trying to remove the knife on his own, but to no avail.

"Go to hell," the batarian bartender ground out.

Ascher pretended to mull over the thought in his head, until he saw the horrified look on his turian friend's dark colored face. Just like that, the bad-cop interrogator facade vanished, replaced with an equal amount of guilt. Keeping a poker face, he turned to the batarian and yanked the bloodied knife from the counter, tossing it over his shoulder. The batarian in turn collapsed, grasping his freshly impaled hand while covering it with the supply of drink napkins located under the counter.

"I'm not hungry anymore," Ascher muttered in the dark brown turian's direction as he walked out of the club in a hurry, a few onlookers staring at him on his way out.

Ascher hurried down the front steps of the club and towards the elevator. He stepped inside, the doors quietly shutting behind him. He hit the button for one of the docking bays, falling against the wall of the elevator as he held his face in his hands. The metal of his suit clanged dully against the metallic wall of the elevator as he fell against it, old, unwanted memories drowning out the positive ones.

Ascher groaned. Just when he thought he'd forgotten about all the people he'd killed all those years ago. No, he didn't know any of them, that much was true. The Luxionans told him that would make it easier. That fact made those jobs that much harder instead. All he knew was that he was killing Vangels on the Luxionans hit-list. Sure, he did have a grudge against them for what happened at the lab he was created in. But he only had a grudge against those scientists that mistreated, as well as their superiors.

When he'd escaped the lab where he was created, he was immediately taken into custody by the Luxionan government. Instead of helping him like they promised, they used him to do their jobs for them, just like the Vangyre government planned to do. They used him to take out high ranking Vangel officials that were contributing to the Vangel war efforts. Ascher didn't know them. But he was told that all these men were the people who ordered his creation, the ones who wanted to use him as a super soldier that would win the war for the Vangels.

That couldn't be even more false. The men that the Luxionans sent Ascher to kill, were simply the CEO's of major weapon or armor corporations that were supplying the Vangel army with their armor and guns.

Ascher shook his head. He had to stop thinking about that. That was over a hundred years ago, in Luxionan and Vangel time at least. Over in the Milky Way, it was more like ten years, give or take a few years.

He stood up straight once the elevator doors opened and walked down the hallway in one of the docking bays. He walked straight up to a window where he looked out into the black wash of space, sprinkled with tiny white stars all around. Ascher sighed. He propped his arm up on his left hand, resting his chin on the palm of his right hand, and stared into the vast emptiness of the space surrounding Omega. It wasn't too empty. He could see some of the smaller asteroids floating out in the emptiness. He wished his head could be empty of these torturous memories. But, he'd just have to literally stare off into space and clear his head for right now.

Lyanis stared horrified at his friend's actions. He'd never seen Ascher act like this before. Had never seen the hybrid exhibit the calm fury he was utilizing right now. He could only watch as his friend tortured the batarian, exhibiting no emotion as the batarian tried desperately to pull the knife out of his hand, his hand slipping on his own yellow-green blood. The tears of pain that flowed from his eyes, the agony fueled moans and whimpers of terrible pain, the alien on his knees with his face contorted as the hybrid tortured him.

Then his friend looked over and saw the turian's face, the fear radiating from his eyes like two bright suns. Lyanis saw his friend's face falter for a split-second, the cold fury changing to worry and upset, but quickly changing back to the cold fury as he whispered something inaudible to the turian as he removed the knife and tossed it over his shoulder. His head fell forward in shame as the batarian collapsed and tried to tend to his wound, muttering something Lyanis couldn't quite make out as he quickly exited the club. The turian, in turn, followed him.

But dang, was that man fast. As Lyanis was running down the steps, he caught sight of the hybrid entering the elevator. The elevator doors closed out Lyanis' sight of his friend as he ran along the metallic ground, the orange streetlights gleaming in bright splotches off of his armor as he jogged towards the elevator. Once he got to the closed doors, he looked up at the location monitor up above the elevator doors. The dark turquoise screen had a set of numbers, as well as docking bay numbers. Number DB6 was currently lit up orange, signaling the elevator's destination.

Lyanis thumbed the 'Open' button for the elevator and waited. He folded his arms as he shifted on his feet worriedly. Yes, Ascher's actions did scare him, but it wasn't like that would kill their friendship. In fact, Lyanis still had a crush on the hybrid, and was worried about him. Obviously Ascher still had some issues that he hadn't talked about yet, and that worried the the dark brown turian greatly. He just hoped Ascher was doing semi-okay at the moment, at the very least. It wouldn't do to find him while he was in the middle of a nervous breakdown. That wouldn't do at all.

A couple minutes later, the elevator doors opened and the turian thumbed the 'DB6' button on the floor options screen. Just as the elevator doors were closing, a human blonde haired woman came sprinting in, nearly hitting the back wall as she skidded to a stop. This earned her a look of confusion from the taller turian.

"Whew, nearly missed it," the woman sighed in relief as she turned to the taller turian who continued to stare at her confusedly.

"Ummm..." was all that came out of Lyanis' mouth, his sub vocals displaying his confusion like a main attraction at a museum. His mandibles even fluttered in confusion at the woman's sudden entrance.

"Oh, sorry darling. Could you hit the 'DB6' button for me? I'm afraid I'm completely blind," the English woman stated, still sounding incredibly cheerful despite her depressing statement.

"Ummm, I already did," Lyanis stated, still failing a little bit to speak correctly.

"Oh perfect!" The bubbly woman clapped her hands together, adjusting her bright white dress that started just below her shoulders, covered her arms and wrapped around both palms in a thin white strip, and cut off at her calves in a diagonal line. She wore matching white formal slippers, as well as a silver eighth note pendant. "The name's Wynona by the way. Tambri Wynona Vibrato. You can call me Tambri or Wynona, but not both."

The woman smiled at him and held her hand out, her pearly whites gleaming in the elevator light. The turian grasped it to find this woman had a rather firm grip, her smile growing wider as their hands separated.

"Oooh! You didn't tell me you were a turian!" Wynona exclaimed in a delighted tone, hopping up and down in place excitedly, the heels of her slippers clicking against the metal floor of the elevator.

"I am. My name's Lyanis. Lyanis Starque, and it's… interesting to make your acquaintance Wynona," Lyanis replied after a few moments of silence. Did this woman drink coffee all day or something? She seemed to be too happy for her own good, especially since she was on _Omega_ right now.

"It is _very_ nice to meet you Mr. Starque! Would you rather me call you Lyanis, Li, or Mr. Starque?" Wynona asked him, her cheeky grin still plastered to her face.

This woman was psychotic. It was the only explanation.

"Lyanis is fine," the turian replied, hiding his feelings of discomfort. This woman was so happy it bothered him, but of course he wouldn't tell her that. Mainly out of fear of what might happen if he did.

Much to his relief, the doors opened, and Ascher was standing at the end of the hall, staring out a window into the black expanse that surrounded Omega. Lyanis sighed in relief that he wasn't having any sort of nervous breakdown. The turian walked down the closed brown bridge towards the hybrid, who didn't notice him as he was lost in his own thoughts. Once the green marked alien was behind his friend, he lifted his hand and slowly lowered it onto the hybrid's armored shoulder. Again, Ascher was too lost in his swirling storm of positive and negative thoughts that had formed after his incident in Afterlife.

"Ascher," Lyanis said softly, his voice taking on a rich tone as his sub vocals thrummed their mixture of concern and relief. The turian's friend jumped in his place as he jerked his head around, his frightened face falling sad at the sight of his turian friend. His head fell in shame, a sigh escaping his nose as his smoky eyes stared at the ground.

"Hey," was all that came out of his mouth, the greeting coming out in a mixture of fear, shame, and sadness.

Lyanis couldn't stand this anymore, pulling his friend against his armored chest as he wrapped his arms around the smaller man in a hug. While the action shocked Ascher, he embraced the turian back, his cheek resting against the amber colored breastplate. They stood like that for a little while before Wynona cleared her throat.

"Sorry to interrupt this emotional moment boys, but I'm standing right here," the blind woman said awkwardly as she shifted from one foot to the other. She had been leaning against the wall close to Ascher. She could slightly deduce what was happening from her heightened hearing. The small clink of the turian's armored hand grasping Ascher's armored soldier, the dull clang of their breastplates colliding as the turian hugged the hybrid. Also the slight scraping sounds of armor sliding on armor. Then there was the sound of Ascher gasping as he recognized the voice of his old friend.

"Bri!" Ascher exclaimed as he embraced the woman in the white silk dress.

Tambri returned the embrace with a white smile, closing her eyes as she held her dear friend close. It had been so many years since she'd seen Ascher; at least thirty. In Vangel years at least.

"Jeez, the last time I saw you was when you pulled me out of Luciferia right?" the hybrid exclaimed in shocked happiness, momentarily forgetting about the incident in Afterlife.

"I do believe so, yes," Wynona confirmed with a nod.

The two of them started up a conversation that lasted a little while, leaving Lyanis feeling awkward now as he stood off to the side. He had been so worried about his friend after he fled the club, but now he seemed perfectly fine. And it was all because this woman that he'd run into in the elevator just so happened to be a dear old friend of Ascher's. He was sure that he'd get to talk to Ascher later about what happened in the bar, so he tried to just let it go for now.

"So where did you two meet?" The turian asked them, trying to forget his worry by joining in this conversation.

"I was one of the scientists at the lab where Ashy here was created," Tambri stated, immediately changing from bright and bubbly to dark and serious. "Now before you pull your gun on me, I was only one of two scientists who worked there that had an actual heart. The rest, well… Let's just say that I'm glad they're all dead."

A deadly smirk danced across her velvet shaded lips, those pearly whites peeking out as her mouth curled up. "But I digress."

"No. No you don't Bri. You were one of two main reasons those scientists are dead," Ascher said, tearing down her lie instantly.

"Oh Ashy, you're no fun," the woman said as the smile returned to her face. "So, what have you been up to?"

"He got arrested," Lyanis piped up with a smirk, delighting in the nickname Wynona gave Ascher. Now he was never going to let his friend hear the end of it.

The woman's jaw dropped as she let out a purposefully dramatic gasp. Her hands flew to her cheeks, she leaned forward, and Ascher just stood unamused. At Lyanis and Tambri. Mainly Tambri. Perhaps he was used to this woman and her antics, Lyanis thought.

"Here it comes," Ascher murmured to the turian before Tambri exploded.

"ASCHER GREY! I GET SEPARATED FROM YOU FOR ONLY A FEW YEARS AND YOU GO AND GET YOURSELF ARRESTED! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF! HMPH!" Tambri roared, her voice booming basically through the entirety of Omega as she spun around on her heel with her arms folded, stomping her foot on the ground. It sounded as though she just screamed into a loudspeaker. Lyanis' ears were ringing, and Ascher was pretty sure he'd lost all hearing for a few minutes.

"Are you done?" Ascher asked the drama queen, clearly unamused.

"Yes," Wynona said after a few breaths. "So I assume this turian friend of yours is your new love interest?"

The woman popped that question with such a casual tone that it was almost disturbing. Then again most everything about this woman was disturbing. Regardless, the question lit Ascher's cheeks like a Christmas tree, temporarily leaving him looking like an armored garden gnome.

"BRI! What the heck!" Ascher nearly screamed, leaving the woman opposite him slightly confused.

"What? I saw the way you hugged Mr. Starque back. You clearly have feelings for him. Don't deny it, I'm always right you know," Tambri winked at him as she turned her attention to Lyanis. He'd gone quiet, his mandibles fluttering like they did when he was embarrassed. His cheek plates had even lit up as he blushed.

"Oh darling, it's nothing to be ashamed of! Plenty of the men in my race are homosexual or bisexual, as I've learned in the past…" she trailed off, looking down and to the side as her smile faded for a millisecond. "And besides, Ascher here is _quite_ the flirt."

"BRI!" Ascher exclaimed again, his cheeks turning as red as fresh tomatoes. He _hated it_ when Tambri acted like this around all of his guy friends. He'd always thought of Lyanis as a friend. A really good friend at that. Screw it. In the short months he'd known this turian, Lyanis had become one of his best friends ever, considering he didn't have too many friends these days. He'd never thought of the turian in that way.

Lyanis was dying on the inside. This woman was bringing his confidence nerves, what little of them he had, crashing down with the way she talked about him and Ascher. Once things had settled down a little bit this evening, he was going to make sure that Ascher was okay. As he was doing that, he was slowly going to ease into asking him to dinner. After dinner, he'd confess his feelings for the hybrid and this plan was really starting to sound cliche and cheesy but he had a crush on the man darn it!

After ironing out the fact that they were just friends with Tambri, who still didn't believe it but decided to temporarily drop it, the three of them headed back into the elevator. Lyanis thumbed the number 3, which was the floor where Afterlife was located. Apparently Wynona knew about some really good varren sliders that one of the bartenders served at the club, which made Ascher's stomach growl.

"I guess you're hungry now, Ashy," Lyanis smirked down at the hybrid, who was blushing again. This time it was because he wasn't used to hearing the deep, rich voiced turian refer to him like that. Even without the flanging effect of the turian's sub vocals, Ascher loved hearing his deep voice. He just loved people with deep voices in general, mainly men though. If a woman had a deep voice, it was kind of creepy in most cases. But Lyanis' was great. It was almost as deep as the bass singer of Dole Lawson and Quicksilver, a bluegrass band from the 2000's. That's right. Ascher was old fashioned, and he wasn't afraid to show it.

But back to the dark brown turian's voice. His normal voice were great, but his sub vocals made it so much better. It was like another tone of voice. A natural, lower tone of voice that was perfectly layered under his normal voice. And the slight delay from the flanging effect made it so much better.

And then Lyanis talked to him. He didn't know how much he enjoyed his friend's voice until he thought about it. It always made him a little bit happier every time the turian spoke to him, as well as a little bit envious. The hybrid kind of wished he had a voice like the turian's. That'd be cool.

"I guess. You're never going to stop calling me that now, am I right?" Ascher asked the turian, who smiled. Then those dark chocolate colored mandibles would flare into a smile like they did just now.

"Nope. Never," the turian laughed to himself, low and playful. And then that laugh.

"Gee, thanks Bri," Ascher spoke sarcastically to the woman standing to the far left of the elevator. That sentence had more than one motive behind it. Now, because of this woman, Ascher couldn't stop thinking about the turian next to him. Neither could he stop thinking about all the things he loved about Lyanis either. He sighed. This was going to be a long night.

"Yes, thank you Bri. I needed a nice nickname that annoys the hell out of Ascher," Lyanis grinned devilishly at the hybrid, making him blush even more. He'd never blushed so much in his life, and he hated the turian so much for it right now.

"Oh of course, darling. Always happy to help," Wynona laughed as she leaned against the cool steel wall of the elevator.

For a little while, the trio simply listened to the low hum of the moving elevator as all three were lost in their own thoughts. Lyanis was having a lot of fun, and was glad to meet this old friend of Ascher's. She was helping him out immensely to gain his confidence back whether she knew it or not. Plus Tambri/Bri/Wynona/whatever they felt like calling her, she didn't really seem to care at all, was so much fun to be around. Lyanis started to think of her as a bright little ball of loud and dramatic sunshine. Psychotic sunshine yes, but sunshine all the same. And the way she immediately assumed that he and Ascher were already a thing. How the turian wished for that to be true. To heck with that, he was going to make it true.

Wynona was enjoying the time she was spending on Omega. In all and complete honesty, she had been on Omega for a good year now. And had she done _so much._ She'd made her own merc group, the Static Force. And did that group blow up. In a good way. Wynona had partnered up with Aria T'Loak, the queen of Omega herself, to have her merc group keep all the other merc groups in check. And did she enjoy that. It gave her a sense of power, a sense of leadership on Omega. She felt like she was actually doing good in a place that was basically the Detroit of the Milky Way.

Of course, she wasn't doing it alone. Her partner in crime, Sarina Voia, the other scientist who had a heart in that lab back on Vangyre was there to keep her in line. And train the many mercenaries-turned-vigilantes that were fighting for a better Omega. They existed to keep the Blue Suns, Eclipse, and Blood Pack from running amok on the space station. There were actual citizens that lived on Omega that feared these groups, and Static Force existed to keep them safe. To give them a group of people to rely on for protection instead of having to rely on someone they had to pay for protection.

But there was one elusive band of mercs that kept slipping from her grasp every time she and Sarina thought they had caught them. A band of mercenaries led by a vigilante who operated under the code name Archangel. She knew that he was a turian, but that was about it. That really narrowed things down for their searches for the vigilante and his group. Wynona and Sarina didn't necessarily hate him. He was helping out the citizens of Omega just like Static Force was, but she found his methods questionable. She and Sarina wanted to at least meet with him and discuss some things. Like to see if he and his vigilante friends wanted to join Static Force, and she and Sarina agreed that they could offer him a spot of leadership. But every time they approached him, he would flee. So they felt kind of stuck in that regard.

Meanwhile, Ascher started thinking of ways he could approach the turian next to him. Maybe buy him a drink at Afterlife, then they could just sit and talk like they used to back in Purgatory. Perhaps that was where Ascher fell in love with the turian's voice. For the longest time, all the way up until they escaped, Ascher had never seen the turian's face. He only knew the turian by his voice, and he was more that fine with that. Lyanis' voice was probably Ascher's most favorite thing about his turian friend, his second favorite thing being his colony markings. They kind of made Lyanis look like a turian badass, and Ascher found that kind of sexy.

Finally, the elevator stopped humming as the doors slid open, launching the three friends out of their respective thoughts. Tambri was the first to step out of the elevator, followed by Lyanis then Ascher. She led them back into the club, down through the hallway with the screened walls of fire, the footfalls of Bri's heels echoing through the dim, amber chamber. She held the door open for them as Lyanis stepped through with an appreciative smile, Ascher thanking her as he followed the turian. Wynona smiled as she let the door fall shut with a quiet click as it came completely shut.

"This way you two," the blind woman smiled, leading them up a set of stairs located just right of the main bar. Ascher pointed out that the bartender had already been replaced by a salarian, sounding impressed. Lyanis pointed out the high probability of Aria most likely having no shortage of employees for many occupations scattered across Omega. Tambri confirmed that.

"Right here," Tambri said as she turned around to face the darker colored turian and the light skinned hybrid, spreading her arms out as if she were presenting to them something extravagant. "The best mini bar on all of Omega."

"Ya got that part right," came a gravelly voice from behind Wynona. She stepped aside to introduce the krogan bartender behind her, a paler krogan with a white head plate and amber eyes that seemed to glow in the dim light of the club. "Ascher, Lyanis, meet Bruntus of Clan Urdnot. This man is the best bartender on Omega, in my personal opinion."

"A personal opinion I agree with," the pale krogan said with a half smile. "What'll ya have?"

"Water," Ascher said immediately, causing Tambri to give him a strange look.

"Oh come on Ascher, one drink isn't going to kill you. Not this time anyway," Wynona smiled. "Bruntus, give him a krogan pale ale. He needs something heavy right about now."

"Bri! I think I made it pretty clear that I don't want anymore alcohol! Besides, how did you know about that?" Ascher complained.

"Who do you think that random asari was that helped you out?" Wynona reminded him, giving Bruntus a thumbs up on the pale ale.

Ascher let out a massive sigh and gave up.

"What about you turian, what'll you be getting?"

"I'll have a salarian sangria," Lyanis stated a little tiredly. "I need something to mellow me out."

"You got it," the bartender said as he set to work, preparing their drinks as they sat down on the metal bar stools. Ascher rested his forehead between his index finger and thumb, sighing as Wynona patted him on the back.

"It's been a long day Wynona. Why can't you just let me order my own drink and let Lyanis and I go back home?" Ascher breathed out, cracking his eyes open a little bit as he turned them towards the woman to his right.

"Because the last drink you ordered almost got you killed. A decision that has revoked you of your privileges of ordering your own drink," Tambri grinned, facing him as she rested her cheek on her fist.

This evoked a look from the hybrid. "Just because you're one of the two nice scientists that raised me at that lab doesn't make you my mom. And it _certainly_ doesn't let you dictate my decisions. I am an adult, both by the standards of this galaxy, and the standards of our galaxy."

"You tell 'er Ashy. Like it'll make a difference," Lyanis chuckled, taking a sip of his drink as the krogan handed them out. "Damn this stuff works fast."

Ascher glared at him as he took another sip from the small glass, watching the light green liquid pass his dark lips and drain into his mouth. The turian set his drink down, already about halfway through with it. He caught the glare from the hybrid out of the corner of those bright grassy fields, his trademark smirk forming on his face as he winked back at his crush.

Ascher's cheeks reddened as he looked back at Tambri, knowing she couldn't actually see his face. He heard the turian chuckle again at his crush's reaction, that smirk of his probably growing into a smirk. He then looked down at the foggy, peach colored drink sitting in the small glass in front of him. He picked it up in his dark gloved hand, looking at it to see if he could see through it. The drink wouldn't let him, only letting him catch a glimpse of an ice cube that floated at the bottom of the glass, so he lowered it out of range of his eyes. He knew that Bri and maybe even Lyanis wouldn't let him leave the club until he finished at least one of these. He brought the cool, smooth glass up to his lips as he tipped it, taking a small sip of the strong liquid.

The equally cool liquid passed his lips and fell onto his tongue, lighting it up like a dubstep concert. An immediate and strong tingling sensation immersed his taste buds as he swallowed what little amount of the tart liquid he sipped in. From there, a numbing warmth bloomed from his chest and reached to the farthest corners of his body, showering him in the same warmth as he closed his eyes. Once the warmth reached his head, his brain started to buzz and it felt as though his skull started to vibrate, his breath catching at the sensation. The tingling sensation fused with the warmth that showered his body and formed a feeling of pure ecstasy, causing Ascher to exhale and set his drink down. He hadn't realized that he'd been gripping it as hard as he was. His eyes opened as slow as the alcohol-induced high left his body, seeing a small crack in the drink. It was only a surface crack though, so none of the alcohol was leaking out.

"So?" Tambri asked him as his breathing regulated itself.

" _Good Lord, Bri. How did you even find this stuff?"_ Ascher exhaled one last time, bringing up his palm to wipe down his face.

"It's strong right?" Wynona said, her grin growing even wider.

" _Dude…_ Strong doesn't even _begin_ to describe the potency of this drink," Ascher replied, the edge he was carrying with him completely gone.

"By the way, krogan or not, I've never seen anyone exit this place awake after finishing one of these," Bruntus laughed.

"Well no crap. But _dude_. That was one sip, and it was a small one," Ascher said as he grabbed the turian's arm with a look of complete shock.

In turn, Lyanis looked at him and couldn't help but chuckle. He'd never seen Ascher wasted before, and it was hilarious. He just looked so tired, like he was about ready to pass out. He started slouching, more than he already did. He had this look of blissful happiness, grinning in his drunken haze. He wasn't the kind of drunk to slur his words or get really hyped up on one emotion. The kind of drunk that Ascher looked like he was incredibly shocked by the littlest of things.

"Remind me to order him a shot glass of this stuff the next time he feels like ordering it," Lyanis laughed as Ascher tried a bigger sip, cursing himself after doing so. After he removed the glass cup from his lips, the hybrid immediately set it down as she braced himself on the counter, his eyes the size of saucers. He was gripping the back corner of the metal barstool as the feeling he experienced earlier was just amplified times ten. He could hear the corner creak as it bent under his vice grip as a torrent of ecstasy and motion sickness reverberated throughout his being.

"Sounds like a good plan," Ascher groaned as he clutched his stomach for a brief second, heaving in a massive breath as his hand slowly released its grasp on his stomach.

"Yeah, you'll want to drink that like you started out. Drink krogan pale ale like you would drink wine: one small sip at a time. Otherwise it'll feel like you ate some spoiled varren that was covered in mold," Bruntus advised the hybrid, partially taking his statement from personal experience. That stuff had made him nearly puke on multiple occasions.

"But it's safe to take in a shot glass?" Ascher wheezed out.

"I have extra small shot glasses for this stuff," the krogan explained.

Lyanis and Wynona had already finished their drinks, the turian feeling like a high hanar right now. But that was only because he'd had two salarian sangrias and was _this close_ to slurring his words. Wynona had decided to be the designated driver when it came to getting these two back to the Static Force complex, playing it safe and just ordering a Beringer Moscato, her favorite wine. She stood up first, pushing her stool in as she pulled up her omni-tool and dialed up Sarina.

"Hey Moonlight, I'm bringing them back to the complex. Just a heads up," Tambri spoke into the glowing orange gauntlet.

"'Kay," came Sarina slightly staticky voice, ending the call afterwards.

"Chatty as ever," Tambri sighed before turning back to the turian who was helping Ascher out of his stool. Ascher stumbled as Lyanis held him up by holding one of the hybrid's arms around his shoulders, causing the woman to run in and help. "Come on. We'll take my car."

"You have a car?" Lyanis asked drowsily, a yawn escaping his lips as he asked that question.

"How else do you think I got here? Walking? That'd take at least a day to accomplish. That is if I didn't run into any thugs along the way. And didn't require food," Tambri deadpanned at the dark chocolate colored turian.

"I was just surprised. Neither do Ascher or I have a car on this heap of junk called a space station. The bars at afterlife aren't junk though. They're very good. Especially the one that Bruntus runs," Lyanis mused as he and Wynona hauled Ascher into the elevator, the turian thumbing the button for the car lot. The two more sober beings of the trio then leaned Ascher against the wall where just sank to the floor, fighting to stay awake.

Lyanis took this time to shake out his arms after carrying the heavy drunk that was now half asleep on the elevator floor, keeping them loose for when he'd have to help Wynona once they arrived at the car lot. He also took this time to stare down at his crushed who was too busy fighting sleep. He could remember clearly that muscular body that set to work painting their armor. Then he was only wearing some underwear, leaving the turian's eyes able to wander that perfect body. Those perfectly toned legs, his chest, those clearly defined biceps, triceps, and quadriceps, as well as his abs. The man was just perfect eye candy.

Wynona noticed a silence in the elevator, and wanted to break it. "Y'know how earlier I asked if you two were a couple?"

"What about it?" Lyanis asked her with a lofty voice, feasting his mind to the romantic fantasies he came up with just by staring down at his crush. He hadn't even realized, but there was a smirk forming on his face. A smirk that would become a full blown smile.

"You don't seem as bothered by it as Ascher was," the Vangel mused.

"Mhm," Lyanis murmured, not even paying attention to the woman in front of him.

Wynona sighed and snapped her fingers in the turian's face, muttering something about boys to herself as she did. Lyanis quickly snapped out of his reverie as he turned back to Wynona, a smirk forming on her face as she realized just who he was paying attention to.

"You like him, don't you?" Wynona asked Lyanis, the playfulness coming back to her voice.

Lyanis blushed, looking back down at Ascher to make sure he was still asleep, which he was. He sighed in relief as he closed his eyes to gather himself for a quick second, letting out a big exhale as he slowly opened his eyes and looked back at the woman dressed in white. "What gave it away?"

"Well for starters, you weren't paying attention to me, you were paying attention to Ascher even though he was asleep. While you were, you were staring at him with your eyes half closed and your mandibles were flared into a smile. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were having a fantasy or fantasies of fooling around with him," Tambri stated matter-of-factly with a smirk, staring right back at the turian despite her vision impairment.

"They weren't bed fantasies! They were romantic fantasies! Y'know, kissing him, running my hands over that glorious body of his as he reciprocates in every fashion I just described," Lyanis said in a flustered tone as he tried to defend himself, only blushing harder in the process. "Okay, some of them were bed fantasies, but only two of them! The rest were completely safe!"

"My my, so defensive! But don't worry love, I won't tell him. I'll let you handle that," Tambri winked at him as she laughed.

"You're so annoying sometimes," Lyanis sighed as the blush faded from his face, the humming of the moving elevator filling the silence as they headed towards the car lot.


	5. Peridots and Emeralds

**Chapter 5: Peridots and Emeralds**

The black curtain of sleep was slowly washed away by the softly buzzing light above Ascher as he awoke with a groan, finding himself on a blue sheeted cot in a dimly lit room that was filled with cots identical to his. The rest were neatly made while his was a mess, from tossing and turning all night as he often did. That quirk of his made sleeping difficult in his cell at Purgatory. He moved his legs one at a time off the bed, both of them feeling like lead as part of the worst hangover he'd had in ages. Once he was upright, he lifted a hand to his head and grasped some of the hair, his head feeling like someone attached a rocket to a sledgehammer and aimed it at his head.

After a few minutes, he removed his hand from his hair and noticed that he was in a loose salmon v-neck as well as sleek black pants. That brought a small smile to his lips. Wynona knew how casual he was and he loved it. She knew he had a thing for old fashioned clothing, old fashioned by this galaxy's standards, and he relished it. He also saw a pair of stylish black boots waiting by his white socked feet, which he happily slipped into.

He stood up on the hard silver floor, his bones creaking and cracking as he rose, the material shining after a recent cleaning. He took a deep breath, taking in the scent of the facility as well. It smelled faintly of armor and vehicle grease as well gun powder accompanied by a hint of mint. Wynona was probably responsible for that, knowing how much she loved air freshener. Especially with her heightened senses of hearing and smell.

Ascher walked out of the room to find Lyanis leaning against the wall to his right, waiting for the hybrid. He was wearing casual clothing as well, or at least Ascher thought so. He was wearing a deep, dark blue shirt that covered his arms and up to the top of his neck with a fat white stripe running down its center. He wore a matching pair of pants minus the white stripe, that covered down to his spurs, then matching colored shoes that outlined his toes.

"Good morning Monochrome," Ascher said, unable to help the low drag in his voice brought on by his killer headache. "Mostly monochrome anyway."

"Good morning Mr. Old Fashioned," Lyanis smirked, his voice containing no drag which indicated the turian had a very small or nonexistent hangover. "Mostly anyway."

Lyanis got up off the wall and began walking down the bright hallway, motioning for Ascher to follow him. He'd gotten a wonderful night of sleep, despite having slept on a poorly furnished metal cot. From the way Ascher sounded and looked, it seemed he wasn't so lucky. Or maybe it was just the hangover. Probably the latter.

Ascher found himself staring at the form fitting shirt the turian was wearing. He didn't know why he was staring in the first place, but he just found it incredibly difficult to look away. He liked the way the shirt appeared: somewhat tight but also comfortable. His eyes then took their time as they traced down every nook and cranny of the turian's torso, finally falling onto his hips. And oh, _those hips_. The sharp points at their very tops, then just the perfect width to support his upper body as well as those strong looking legs.

"So are you just staring off into space or are you deliberately staring at my body?" Lyanis teased the hybrid with a smirk, who in turn ripped his eyes away from the turian's body and forced himself to stiff-neck it the rest of the way down the hall.

"Well I know a good looking body when I see one," Ascher covered for himself by flirting with the turian, a blush lighting up his face. In all honesty that flirt of his wasn't much better than getting caught staring at the turian's attractive body, especially when getting caught by said turian.

"To be fair, your body isn't half bad either. In fact, I'm sure a lot of women would be attracted to it," Lyanis complimented the hybrid, maintaining that smirk of his. Man, that smirk of his used to infuriate Ascher to no end. It still kind of did, but now he mostly found it sexy. And that just caused him to blush harder, which made the turian laugh.

"Oh screw you. But what's up with us having to wear this stuff instead of our armor?" Ascher said, walking faster to walk next to the taller turian, having to make quicker strides to match Lyanis' long ones.

"I think it's just a trust thing. Y'know, to armed and dangerous strangers joining a merc group while armed and dangerous doesn't seem like a smart idea," Lyanis pointed out, temporarily dropping his smirk.

"I guess," Ascher replied as he walked behind Lyanis, letting another turian pass by them. The turian had a near white face and wore armor composed of the colors jet black and grey. Emblazoned on his black breastplate was a white S shaped like a lightning bolt enveloping a lightning rod shaped F. Tambri was as creative as ever.

The two of them then walked into what looked like the main garage of the complex. There were armed guards at the entrance of every hallway and frame of every doorway. There were mechanics on the garage floor fixing or improving vehicles and mechs, groups of mercs walking from one place to another while one would read off of a datapad, and other mercs just hanging around. The salarian who was guarding the hallway entrance they just stepped through mentioned he would take lead them to Tambri, or "the boss" as he referred to her.

So they followed him over to the lift where they rode it to the floor of the complex, where they followed the salarian across the dark grey floor. They received looks from some of the other mercs as they surveyed the potential newcomers. Lyanis and Ascher followed the salarian for a few minutes as he led them out of the garage, through a med bay, a mess hall, and then into a sparring room. In there were turians, salarians, krogan, even some batarians and vorcha, and Ascher thought he saw a few elcor.

Lyanis spotted Tambri sparring with another woman with black hair and somewhat dark skin. She had thin, oriental eyes colored a dark amber. She wore a black undersuit that came with typical armor, one without sleeves. It had a zipper, followed by matching colored pants that hugged her legs just as the undersuit hugged her torso. Besides that, she also wore black fingerless gloves and matching colored socks.

On the other hand, Tambri wore an outfit that basically matched the other woman's except hers was dark grey and the undersuit had full length sleeves. Her blonde hair was a mess, the blind woman brushing it back as she took a swing at the black haired oriental woman. The black haired woman then grabbed the incoming fist and yanked Tambri towards her, her right foot lying forward as she kicked Bri in the stomach. Wynona just grunted as she hit the mat, rolling out of the way as the black haired woman went for a finishing axe kick. She sat up then sweep kicked the leg the black haired woman was using to stand, causing her to fall. This move didn't seem to faze her though as she landed on her palms, maneuvering her body so that she was now swinging both of her legs at Wynona. Tambri responded to the incoming _woosh_ of the other woman's legs by hopping back onto her hands, the other woman's legs hitting air as Wynona's body did a sort of worm-like dodge over them, using the remaining momentum to vault back onto her feet.

The salarian merc cleared his throat, the two leaders of the mercenary band freezing in place as they both looked over to the salarian, the black haired woman then noticing Lyanis and Ascher, who were watching the combat display. Lyanis seemed a little shocked at the combat prowess of both women, his mouth hanging open just a little bit. Meanwhile Ascher was simply watching the both of them, waiting to see who would come out on top this time.

"Yes?" Tambri finally said, breaking the short silence.

"Hey Bri. Hey Sarina," Ascher responded, a smile slowly lighting his face up as the black haired woman walked up to him and hugged him, Ascher returning it instantly.

"Hey slugger. Heard you got arrested," Sarina greeted him in the gentle yet serious tone she had. In reality, she was overjoyed to see him, but she was never one to show her excitement very often.

Ascher stayed silent as he enjoyed the first contact with the scientist he'd had in ages. First he gets to see Bri again, and now Sarina. He was so happy to be able to see his first friends in so long, the first people to ever truly care about him. The two people who broke him out of the lab he was created in, only to be separated from them by the Luxionans, only to be reunited again.

"Framed for murder, actually," Ascher corrected the elder woman, who whistled with a grimace on her face.

"Can't catch a break can ya?" Sarina said in an annoyed and pained voice. "Wonder how we're gonna pull your ass out of this one."

"Certainly not without me," Lyanis piped up with a smirk, patting the hybrid on the back only to receive a glare from the slightly shorter man.

Sarina looked at Lyanis for a moment, then back to Ascher, repeating this process a few times until she said "Well. That certainly didn't take long." She smirked at Ascher who turned to glare at her, only to have the turian next to him laugh. Lyanis was really starting to enjoy this. Ascher was really starting to hate it. "Who's the handsome turian?"

"Lyanis Starque, ex-prison guard," Lyanis smiled with a slight bow, holding his hand out to Sarina, who grasped it and shook it.

"So you're the turian Bri was talking about when she was talking about how Ascher broke out of prison!" Sarina realized with a smile.

"It was a team effort, couldn't have done it without him," Ascher smiled, expecting his torment to finally stop. By the sound of the turian's laugh, it was far from over.

"It was more like he caused a distraction, got shot, and left me to do all the work while carrying him out on a stolen cargo ship," Lyanis chuckled, smiling back down at his smaller friend who continued to glare daggers at him.

"Really Ashy? That was rude of you," Wynona piped up, coming up next to Sarina and resting her arm on the black haired woman's shoulder.

"Well excuse me for having a bullet in place of my kneecap and being too crippled to do anything about it," Ascher retorted in a slightly irritated tone, happy to see this quieted the two women for a moment.

"Yeah, that would be troublesome, with the your complex regeneration abilities," Sarina drawled out, her voice getting quieter as she spoke.

The four of them were silent for a moment, Tambri shifting uncomfortably.

"So, are we going to get a tour of this place or are we just going to have to find our way on our own?" Lyanis piped up, leaving Tambri grateful for him breaking the silence, save the quiet pants of their recruits sparring. The occasional echo of a body hitting a training mat, the duller echo of attacks being taken or blocked.

Tambri put her smile back on then answered. "Yes. Hey Tiberius? Are you finished yet?"

Ascher and Lyanis turned around to see a light grey turian with a large black spot that covered the left side of his face perk up just as he was about to pull a black shirt on. He had light green-yellow eyes similar to Lyanis' peridot pools, but had a longer fringe. There was a somewhat thin, shallow crack running from the bottom right of his face diagonally up and to the left, stopping at the bottom of his right eye then continuing at the top just a little bit. For the brief period of time that his torso plates were exposed, Lyanis noticed more scars running up and down the other man's upper carapace. His legs were covered by a pair of tight-fitting pants usually worn when sparring.

"Yes! Something you need?" Tiberius called back in his deep voice accompanied by even deeper sub-vocals as he pulled on the loose black shirt he was holding, stepping back into his matching boots. He seemed to notice Lyanis while the dark brown was not so subtly checking him out, winking at the turian before turning his attention back to Tambri.

The non-vocal response threw Lyanis for a loop, a blush forming on his face as his cheek plates and plateless neck-hide flushed light brown. He also suddenly felt very warm, especially around his face and neck.

"Holy deep voice Batman," Ascher muttered to himself, thankfully out of earshot of his companions.

"Yes, can you give these two a tour of the facility?" Tambri called as the large turian began to walk over, Ascher's mouth falling open a little bit when he came up to them. He was the same height as Lyanis, but he was more broad shouldered. He basically looked like a turian with the body mass of a krogan.

"Of course," Tiberius said, turning his attention to the smaller men next to him. "Follow me, you two."

The built turian then turned around and began walking off out of the sparring hall, Lyanis and Ascher following behind his black clothed form, the dim light of the sparring area making his form somewhat hard to see. Although, instead of exiting out the way Lyanis and Ascher were led through, Tiberius took them through an exit to the left of the room. The larger turian's covered talons clacked against the metal floor of the new room filled with work benches. On each workbench was either a rifle or a hand cannon or a sniper or an assault rifle, et cetera. There were a few people in the smaller room, having the lowest ceiling out of all of the rooms Lyanis had seen in the facility so far. This room's ceiling height was on par with the sleeping quarters of the crew as well.

"This is the weapons work room, where you can take your gun to any of the workbenches you see in here," Tiberius stated as he turned to the two newcomers behind him, his attention slightly more focused on Lyanis as he checked out the leaner turian's body. His eyes lingered on Lyanis a moment longer before he began walking to the next room.

This next room had to be a couple times larger than the weapons work room, and was filled with exercise equipment. Weights, ellipticals, exercycles, treadmills, steppers, weight machines of varying types, as well as a large array of weights for the large array of species that worked there. Dumbbells, bench presses, Ascher saw some Salmon Ladders as well as gymnastics-esque equipment, punching bags too.

Then there were the occupants. Lyanis saw an elcor on an elcor-sized treadmill, he saw a salarian in exercise gear leading a group of runners around the perimeter of the room. There were a couple turians, one of them shirtless, an asari, a batarian, and a krogan. The group was talking amongst themselves as they traced the perimeter of the gargantuan space, the exercise complex looking just a bit larger than the garage. Their foreheads gleamed with sweat in the bright gym light, a faint collective panting audible in the room as many mercs pushed themselves to the limit.

"This is the exercise complex. Mercs in training come here to whip themselves into shape whereas mercs who've passed the training program come here to stay sharp, or just blow off steam," Tiberius explained, Ascher now seeing where he got his size from. The turian was burly, and Ascher had simply assumed that he was born a big turian. But looking at this room and all the different exercise machines and tools, he could see the buff equivalent of Lyanis working out here a lot.

"One would think that mercs would go to the sparring complex to blow off steam, rather than just exercise it out," Lyanis commented, buying into the stereotype of most mercs being a-holes.

"Well, there's more than one way to blow off steam," Tiberius said to the turian to his right, his eyes roaming Lyanis' body for another moment before continuing. "Though most people here I've noticed usually use the sparring room to keep their fighting skills sharp, or to settle issues they have with another merc."

"I suppose that makes sense," Lyanis agreed, his peridot pools drifting from Tiberius' fringe to his waist and back, the bigger turian catching Lyanis with his own green-eyed gaze, though his eyes were more of a pair of shining emeralds. Lyanis blushed light brown on his cheek plates and the hyde of his neck, unable to look away from those alluring forests contained in those shiny orbs.

Ascher noticed this, looking first at Tiberius, then bending forward to look at the unresponsive Lyanis. He knew what Tiberius was doing, and that it was working on Lyanis. He could see the look in his eyes as he stared back at the larger turian. That look of shy attraction mixed with an innocent curiosity, the feelings Ascher felt for Lyanis when the two of them were alone.

But a new feeling started to arise in the pit of his stomach, rising like a ribbon of smoke from an extinguished candle through his body. It wasn't necessarily a malicious feeling, but it certainly contained hate. Burning hatred mixed with dark and murky sadness, as well as a near overwhelming feeling of longing. The worst kind of longing. The kind of longing of wanting someone or something, but the kind of longing that leaves the truth glowing in the back of your mind like an LED sign. The kind of longing that made you feel as though gravity itself had targeted you, and was trying to push you down into the earth and trap you there. A longing that when mixed with a burning hatred and a dark and murky sadness created a horrible storm of jealousy. Jealousy that felt like a driving force of anger, but one that was going to tear you to shreds in the end.

A horrible feeling that hit his brain, where it was spread through the rest of his body, a feeling he could feel running through his brain like a partner to his blood. He could feel it throughout his body, like one would feel wind blowing against their body. This jealousy seemed to touch Ascher both on the inside and the outside. He felt sick to his stomach, a tightness in his chest, a stiffness in his arms, legs, neck and back, as well as a dull aching in his head. He hated it, just like he was really starting to hate Tiberius.

Ascher cleared his throat loudly. "The tour?"

"Yes! Right, the tour," Tiberius said, his head snapping away from Lyanis' gaze, attempting to focus on the main objective.

'Now remember, they haven't actually confessed anything towards each other,' one side of Ascher's mind reminded him, the better part of him trying to keep himself calm.

'But they've basically fallen for each other, so you might as well just give up. I mean, what would a turian like Lyanis want with an abomination like you? You remember the look on his face when you tortured that batarian bartender,' the other side of him chimed in, bringing back that torrent of feelings he felt after seeing the fear in his friend's eyes. Bringing back the memories of the cold, emotionless killer he used to be. Sometimes he questioned whether or not he was still that same man.

"Ascher?" Lyanis said to the hybrid with a look of concern on his face, the conflicting voices in his head falling quiet. He noticed that Tiberius was looking back at them, patience in his eyes when he looked at the hybrid's turian friend, but incredible smugness filled them when his gaze fell on the hybrid.

"I'm fine," Ascher said quietly as he started walking, Tiberius turning in place as he began leading the two of them again. The larger turian led them from room to room, giving a brief description when needed. He simply gave the name of the rooms that didn't warrant explanation, such as the mess hall. Along the way, Ascher could hear the flirts and see the suggestive looks Tiberius was throwing at Lyanis, fighting to keep his jealousy down. He could see his turian friend blushing for most of the tour, his jealousy fighting against his attempts to stifle it like a defiant caged animal.

Once they got done, the two of them met back up with Sarina and Tambri in the mess hall for dinner. What Tiberius had failed to mention was that the mess hall served food that was actually decent, which Ascher thought would be hard to accomplish on Omega. Besides the bar food in Afterlife anyway. Dinner this evening was steak with mixed vegetables and water. Ascher walked behind Lyanis in the line for everyone to get their food, feeling like he was in the cafeteria back in the lab on Vangyre. Except where this mess hall was abuzz with mercs talking amongst themselves, the scientists back on Vangyre brought their work everywhere, including the cafeteria, rendering meal time dead quiet.

Quickly enough, Ascher and Lyanis exited the line and found an empty table. The two ate in silence, which Lyanis found odd. He thought that after the day they'd had, Ascher having only gotten to talk in the morning, he'd be more talkative. He was about to say something when a larger man sat down right next to him, Tiberius he found out when looking to his right. He immediately clammed up, suddenly taking great interest in the cup of water on his steel tray.

"Lyanis, Ascher," the deep voiced alien greeted, digging into his food. "Really enjoyed giving you guys that tour today. I have a feeling the both of you will be great additions to this team."

'That makes one of us,' Ascher thought to himself as he felt his jealousy returning, the anger part of it more prevalent than anything at that moment.

"Hey Tiberius," Lyanis greeted sheepishly, picking up the cup in front of him and gulping down the rest of the water in his cup. He really wished that water was some of that salarian sangria he had the other night, because then he'd be in a better mood to deal with his wide framed suitor.

"Bye Tiberius," Ascher said as he got up, tossing his trash in the trash can and setting his tray on top, leaving a shocked Lyanis in his wake. He looked back at the turian, who stared at him open-mouthed, his eyes pleading for someone to rescue him. Ascher just winked at him and walked off, hoping to find Tambri or Sarina. He really needed to talk to one of them so he could iron out his emotions and decompress.

"See ya," Tiberius said, not really paying Ascher any mind as he slowly slid up next to Lyanis, who blushed more and more the closer the bigger turian got. Tiberius smiled down at the obviously shy and inexperienced turian, using his slight height advantage to his favor. He leaned in really close to the petrified turian next to him, close enough that his lips were barely inches away from Lyanis' right ear hole. The slightly shorter turian was breathing quietly but quickly, his face and neck having grown incredibly hot. The fact that he could feel the the light colored turian's hot, moist breath against his right ear hole didn't help. It didn't help at all, in fact it just made him feel even more skittish.

The main reason Lyanis was so uncomfortable was that he was realizing just how much he was into Tiberius. The man's broad, muscular build had his mouth hanging open from the first moment he laid eyes on the hunk. Then his incredibly deep voice complimented by his even deeper subvocals. Then there was the close proximity Tiberius produced the moment Ascher abandoned Lyanis, even when the brown turian gave him his best pleading eyes.

"Y'know you look so sexy when you squirm in place like that," Tiberius whispered seductively, his gloved hand lightly tracing the younger, slightly smaller turian's clothed thigh, making him squirm even harder. Watching him in that position made Tiberius quietly keen out his want, right into the ear hole of the smaller man.

That last comment did it for Lyanis. He immediately stood up, catching the older turian off guard. He watched as the younger turian walked his tray over to the trashcan and threw his cup away, setting his tray on top of it. Had Tiberius done something wrong? Had he been too forward? These questions and questions akin to them fired off in his mind as he watched the younger turian, frozen at the trash can, visibly breathing heavily.

Lyanis stood there at the trash can for a little while, collecting his thoughts. He was romantically interested in Ascher, as well as physically interested. His wild hair, his dark grey pools of storm clouds, those soft looking lips. He had more than a fair share of scars, as did Lyanis, but none of them were facial. He was very muscular for a man of his stature, which Lyanis usually found more attractive in turians. But then again, Ascher was an exception.

Then in comes Tiberius. A _very_ muscular, _very_ physically attractive turian. He knows just how to make Lyanis blush in embarrassment. Not bad embarrassment, just an embarrassment that made his face and neck feel like a bed of hot coals. He knew just how to insert himself into the darker colored turian's fantasies, mainly the ones that were occupied by Ascher. The way he whispered in his ear, breathing his hot breath against the sensitive orifice, the way his gloved talons traced his closed inner thigh. He shuddered slightly. No one had ever come onto him like that. This was a new experience for him, and he just didn't know how to handle it, especially when his romantic wants were at war with his physical wants.

He went and sat back down next to the larger turian, still feeling incredibly shy but a little less than when Tiberius was making moves on him. He took a deep breath, and turned to the taller turian. His respective, deeper green orbs stared back at the younger turian in worry. There were enough thoughts firing off in his own head as it was. Usually people would let him down easy, be incredibly blunt, or would welcome his advances with some of their own. But he'd never seen a potential partner get conflicted like this. He didn't know why it worried him so much, perhaps it was just that he was comfortable when someone gave him a definite confirmation in the ways he listed earlier, but Lyanis was a different case.

Tiberius opened his mouth to speak, but Lyanis rested his two taloned hand on the taller man's shoulder, effectively quieting him.

"Look, um… Sorry, it's just… No one has ever made advances on me like this, so I'm not sure how to respond," Lyanis said in a small, shy voice that even he wasn't used to hearing. He tried to gather his thoughts to make a better response, watching as Tiberius' mandibles fluttered guiltily. He was ready to speak again, Tiberius letting out a quiet guilty keen before he did. "Is there somewhere more private we can talk about this?"

"Yes. I have some paperwork I need to fill out after dinner's over in my private quarters, and that'll take about an hour for me to finish. I believe you and Ascher still need to talk to Bri and Sarina about entering our training program, which setting that up should also take about an hour," Tiberius explained, causing the look of confliction on Lyanis' face to be replaced with one of confusion.

"Training program?" Lyanis arched a brow, then remembered the gym with the jogging group, as well as the many exercise apparatuses located in said gym. He also remembered the firing range, as well as a study room filled to the brim with organized cabinets stocked with datapads, just for different battle strategies. Well it was both for ranged combat and close combat, so he supposed that made sense. "Oh yeah, some of those rooms you showed us make sense now."

Tiberius gave a small nod. "I believe that dinner will be over soon since a lot of people are leaving." Lyanis had lost track of time and looked around, a few people left at some tables. He could see Ascher sitting with Bri and Sarina, talking with them. He turned back to Tiberius who was quickly eating the rest of his food, trying to utilize what time he had left. In his haste, steak juice as well as bits of vegetables stained his mandibles and mouth plates by the time he finished. "Wow, probably going to regret that later." The larger turian used the crappy napkin to quickly wipe off the food stains on the lower part of his face, stumbling as he stood up too quickly and tossed the disposable cup in the trash, setting the metal tray on top of the trash can.

"Y'know, you still haven't given us a place to finish our conversation," Lyanis chided the older, taller turian.

"After you're done with registration and I'm done with my paperwork, we can meet back in my room and talk," Tiberius sighed in slight annoyance, rolling his eyes with a smile. "Meet me back in the mess hall, and I'll take you to my room."

"Okay, I guess I'll see you then," Lyanis said with a shy smile, his cheek plates and the hyde of his neck becoming a lighter shade of brown.

Tiberius smirked, not unlike he did earlier when he was hitting on the younger turian. "Either way, I'm looking forward to it," he said before deciding to have a little fun. He wrapped his hand around the smaller hand of the younger, slightly shorter turian and brought it up to his lips. Before Lyanis could ask him what he was doing, Tiberius pressed his lips into Lyanis' captured hand, causing the dark brown turian to let out a small squeak of surprise. And it was just a peck on his hand, it was a full-blown kiss on his hand that lasted a few seconds. To Lyanis, it felt like a few centuries, his cheek plates and neck hyde lighting up to the lightest brown they'd ever been. Heck they were practically caramel at this point.

The larger turian then removed his lips from the younger turian's hand, putting it back down by his side as he let it go. He then caught a glimpse of the darker turian's face, and had to try with every fiber of his being to not laugh. Lyanis' mandibles were hanging loose, staring with an extreme blush back at Tiberius. His mouth was hanging open in shock, and he looked as if Tiberius had just backhanded him.

"Uh… Umm… Um…" was all Lyanis could respond with as he watched the grinning turian in front of him turn around and walk off. After a few minutes of standing there dumbstruck, Lyanis was finally able to recompose himself, closing his mouth and repositioning his mandibles. He turned around and walked to where Bri, Sarina, and Ascher were sitting. As soon as they saw him turn in their direction, they whipped their heads back to face each other as if they had been talking to each other the entire time. "So I take it you saw that whole thing?"

"What whole thing?"

"Uh-huh."

Ascher and Bri both responded at the same time, Bri then successfully glaring at him despite not being able to see him. Ascher smirked at her for a second, the smirk dropping once he looked back up at the dark brown turian who was holding his face in his hands. Lyanis groaned. "So what's this I hear about a training program? Have you told Ascher about this?" The dark colored turian asked after wiping his hands on his face.

"Yes they have, I said no," Ascher said plainly, Bri and Sarina looking to Lyanis to help them convince the stubborn hybrid. "I've already gone through a training program. I don't need another one."

Lyanis stared at Ascher for a second before kneeling down so his face was level with Ascher's. He set a gloved hand on the hybrid's red clothed shoulder, partially to get his message across, the other part to stabilize himself. Lyanis wasn't the best at balance. "Ascher Grey, you are going into this training program with me whether you like it or not. I will shoot you in both of your knees and drag you along with me if I have to. Do I make myself clear?" The turian said in a calm and even voice, staring with unblinking peridot pools right into Ascher's soul.

Ascher stared back at the kneeling turian, except his eyes stared back with mild fear. "Yes," the smaller man said in a small voice.

"Good," Lyanis said as he stood up, turning his attention to Sarina and Tambri who both wore masks of respect. "So how is this going to go down? Do we have to type our names into a datapad or sign with our blood or what?"

"Since it's just you two and a few other recruits, we'll handle it," Sarina replied with an appreciative smile. "And seeing as how you were able to persuade Ascher to join the training program, you shouldn't have any trouble in that part of the program."

Lyanis laughed, wishing she was being serious. "So what do we do?"

Ascher looked at the to Vangels, who shrugged unhelpfully. "I don't know. Talk to each other. At least until Tiberius comes back to fetch you Li," Wynona smiled up at the turian, only able to assume that he was looking back at her, unamused. She was correct.

"So what? Did the four of you watch us that whole time?" Lyanis asked dryly.

"No, but Bri was eavesdropping on you. You'll come to learn she has really, really good hearing, and to talk as quietly as possible in spite of it," Ascher said as he looked up at the turian standing in front of him. He was able to expel his jealousy by talking to Tambri and Sarina about it, the two reminding the hybrid that in this situation, no matter what, it was Lyanis' choice. They also explained how Tiberius had a habit of sleeping with a lot of the new male recruits. A lot of them. How he seemed to have this effect on them where he'd be able to charm them in some way. Lyanis' response, they said, was pretty common among the recruits that Tiberius hit on. But it always ended with them politely telling him to back off, not having a chat with him in his quarters. Wynona didn't share this, but she wouldn't be surprised if Tiberius did end up getting into Lyanis' pants tonight. She hoped it wouldn't go that, being Ascher's advocate, but still.

"Well, Tambri and I are going to go get your scheduling taken care of. So we're going to leave you two alone, right Bri?" Sarina stated in a particular tone that said 'you and I are going to leave them alone so they can iron things out, right?'

"We are? Oh, yes! We are! Thank you for reminding me Sari, let's get on that," Tambri said, clearly showing she was only half paying attention to her friend. She rose from the table and tried to walk away with Sarina, only to trip on the bench and hit the metal floor with an echoing 'THUD.' "Ow."

"You okay?" Ascher asked her, leaning over to see his friend peel herself off the metal floor and run up next to Sarina.

"Just peachy," Wynona said unamused as she heard Lyanis snicker. "Turian, you try being blind for a day and get back to me!"

It was at that point that Sarina goaded the blonde Vangel out of the mess hall, leaving Ascher sitting at the table staring at a standing Lyanis. The both of them broke out laughing. It felt good for Ascher to be alone with his friend again, enjoying the sound of the turian's rich laughter. Lyanis had one of those laughs that everyone could love. There's always the friend in everyone's own little friend group that has the best laugh, and Lyanis was that friend to Ascher. He liked Tambri's the second best, since her's sounded like it came straight out of a cartoon. He'd rarely ever heard Sarina laugh so it was hard to say with her, and his laugh didn't count. This was about his friends, mainly Lyanis, not him.

The slightly taller turian sat down in front of him, Ascher resting his face against his palm, propping it up on his elbow. He stared at Lyanis' face, retracing his eyes over the multi-plated face. The dark brown plates of his friend's face looked coarse, a few scars noticeable from this proximity. There was a light one tracing the width of his right mandible, a small one that didn't even cover the length of his left cheek plate, and one that slashed down and to the right across the triangular part of his forehead plate. How Ascher longed to have his hand glide across the facial features of his friend, to feel the coarse plates under his smooth skin, to stroke and pet his fringe, to learn to kiss those lip plates. He wanted to trace the emerald path left by his colonial markings, to rest his forehead against the turian's and stay like that for a while. He wanted to do so much with the man in front of him. He was in love with him.

Lyanis looked back at Ascher's light toned face. There were faint scars scattered around his face, reddish pink lines painted on secluded parts of his face in single strokes. His peach colored skin looked smooth to the touch, a welcome softness against the coarseness of his talons. Sunny fields of grass found their way up to stormy clouds of grey, little white spots reflecting the bright lights of the mess hall. Then there was his hair. An even mixture of light and darker brown, clumps of it sticking out in random directions. He could just imagine running his talons through the soft, chaotic mess as he and Ascher kissed. He was also sure Ascher wouldn't mind either way, seeing as how his hair never seemed to have any uniformity.

"So are we just going to keep staring at each other or are we going to talk?" Ascher said, averting his eyes from the turian's face after staring at it for so long. Instead, he focused his attention on the metallic table, crumbs of leftover food from dinner scattered across the table surface.

"What do you want to talk about?" Lyanis cocked his head to the side slightly, folding his arms on the smooth table surface, the side he sat on unblemished by crumbs.

"I don't know…" Ascher trailed off, his eyes finding their way to their favorite peridot pools. "Tiberius, huh?"

Lyanis sighed in a mixture of feelings. That's all he felt when Tiberius was around. Physical attraction, crushing nerves, an inexplicable anxiety. Yes, Tiberius was sexy in all the right ways, yet Lyanis' confidence decided to take a vacation almost every time the larger turian started flirting with him. The anxiety, he couldn't identify where that came from. He didn't even have any theories as to where this emotion could possibly come from; he was at a complete loss.

"Yeah, um… Wow, the things that turian can do to me. And we just met! Today!" Lyanis exclaimed, his voice echoing through the empty mess hall after speaking a little bit too loud.

"I've met someone like that before. My first guy, actually," Ascher started, able to relate completely to what his friend was trying to say. "I had been off and on with women for a while when I had just come to this galaxy, mainly asari women. Then this really confident, very charming salarian comes along when I'm drinking alone at a bar."

"Wait wait wait… a _salarian?_ " Lyanis gawked, his eyes barely contained by the eye space between his face plates.

Ascher blushed, remembering the light colored man. "Yeah, shocking I know. But there was just something about him that threw me off. He was very charismatic, and had a voice deeper than any other salarian I'd met. Being a salarian, he was incredibly intelligent, which he used to his advantage. He experimented with different ways of flirting with me, and stuck with the ones that worked best.

"At first, I tried to politely tell him I wasn't interested, but that man was relentless. He ended up buying me a drink, guessing on the first try a whiskey sour, and went from there. He then started commenting on my looks, stating how he actually liked my hairstyle, saying it was chaotic. That was, compared to previous human partners he'd had, and said it was a nice change of pace. Seeing as how that didn't do much for me, he decided to move in closer.

"So he sits down on the bar stool next to me, moving into my personal space, but not _right_ next to me if that makes sense. As if the proximity didn't make me uncomfortable enough, he leans in close enough that I can feel his hot breath on my ear. Again, I'd never been with another man before, but this was when he really started to have an effect on me. My body started to feel really warm, my breath got short, and I couldn't stop thinking about him. How his body would look without that obstructing coat, how his body would feel on top of mine, how his lips would feel against mine, et cetera. It was also at that point that his hand started rubbing circles on my inner thigh. Then he whispered slowly in my ear 'we are going to have so much fun tonight.'"

"Damn. I would love to meet this salarian. Did you ever catch his name?" Lyanis asked the hybrid, a smirk of interest growing on his face.

"Aezyian. And to top off that comment, he used that long tongue of his to lick from the base of my neck all the way up to my ear. Slowly," Ascher recalled with a fierce blush, rubbing his neck as he remembered the feeling of that strong, wet appendage tasting his neck. By the end of the night, it tasted a lot more than just his neck.

Lyanis' eyes went wide again, his mouth falling open a bit. "That was a bold move. What happened with you after he did that?"

"Well, when he licked me, firmly I might add, I froze. I think I let out a squeak of shock too. I think for a minute he thought he screwed up, and was starting to say something before I cut him off," Ascher said, his blush staying consistent. "And by cutting him off I mean I lost control of myself and kissed him. He was a bit surprised at first by my delayed reaction, but then he got right back into it. I could tell when I felt his tongue inside my mouth, which shocked me as well. Obviously not as much as when he licked up my neck, but it was still my first time kissing another man. Especially a salarian man."

"What was it like, if you don't mind my asking?" Lyanis queried, a tiny blush forming on his face as he pictured Ascher and him kissing. It'd be a little bit difficult he imagined, since he had lip _plates_ while Ascher just had lips.

"It was intense, but incredible at the same time. He was definitely much better at it than me, and he used that to his advantage. Pretty soon I was grasping his shoulders while his two fingered hand clutched the back of my head. And his lips were _so soft and smooth_ , making me want more and more of him for every second that we kissed," Ascher recalled, a smile having formed on his face as he remembered the sensation of the salarian's warm, soft skin against his own. He sighed happily, feeling nostalgic over that special evening. He would love to see Aezyian again, but maybe just to talk with him and catch up. Maybe just to see how he's doing. Maybe just that.

The hybrid regaled the rest of his story of the salarian and him to the attentive and interested turian. Sharing how they danced with each other, drank together, made out in one of the booths in the back of the club. Eventually, Aezyian led him out of Delirium and hailed a cab back to the salarian's apartment where they could be alone for the rest of the evening. The light orange man just had to live on the top floor of the apartment building, but when they got up there, Ascher ended up seeing why. Aezyian owned a penthouse. The only penthouse the building had to offer, in fact.

Ascher explained that from that point, the salarian was true to his word. The two of them did end up having a lot of fun that night.

"Wow. I wish I could have a story like that," Lyanis responded wistfully. He still had to talk to Tiberius tonight and explain himself. He'd have to let that turian down, but then he'd have Ascher waiting for him. Hopefully.

Speaking of which, said turian came walking into the mess hall. Lyanis' head swiveled around to see him walking in, wearing much more casual apparel. A dark blue sleeveless shirt that showcased his muscular arms, as well as a pair of loose-fitting black pants. Lyanis stood up to meet the larger turian, turning back to Ascher for a moment. The hybrid gave an understanding smile as well as a friendly wave to Tiberius. "See ya later, man." The hybrid then got up and walked away, exiting the large room and leaving the two turians alone.

"So, shall we?" Tiberius said, holding his arm out to the opposite exit of the room.

"Sure," Lyanis said neutrally, following the larger turian out of the room and down the hall to the left. They took a lift up to the second floor located at the end of the hall, heading back through that same hallway, turning right down another one and entering the second room on the right.

Lyanis walked in first, Tiberius closing the door behind him. As far as rooms went, Tiberius' wasn't much. There was a work bench with a computer that sat next to his bed, a couple of sofas, and a small bookshelf filled with books. Tiberius gestured for Lyanis to sit down on one of the sofas, which he did. The furniture was a little dated, having a few small tears as well as fraying fabric. The cushions had a worn feeling to them, but they were still very comfortable.

The larger turian pulled off his shoes and sat down on the couch at an angle with the one Lyanis sat on. He folded one leg over the other casually, resting his bare arm on the open top of the couch beside him. He smiled at Lyanis, who couldn't help but blush a little bit. Tiberius still had that effect on him, but it wasn't as bad as it was in the mess hall. He ran a hand over his fringe, scratching at the back of it before opening his mouth to speak.

"So, what did you want to talk about? Maybe getting with me, or did I go too far?" Tiberius spoke, his face starting out light and happy, donning a smile and bright eyes. As he spoke that sentence though, his smile faded and his eyes turned more serious and concerned.

"Well, I definitely wasn't ready to handle those advances you made earlier, but then again I've never had a relationship with anyone else, physical or otherwise," Lyanis started, blushing a little more as he saw Tiberius' face change from concern to awe. His eyes got big, his jaw dropped and his mandibles hung loose a little bit at Lyanis' last comment.

"You've never-? Dude, you're missing out! You need to put yourself out there more, try different things with different people; try physical relationships!" Tiberius exclaimed, trying to explain to the other turian what he was missing out on.

"So I've noticed," was all Lyanis managed to say. "Anyway, I've made my decision."

Tiberius sat attentive at this statement, ready to hear whatever answer the other turian had for him. He was naturally hoping it was a yes to him, but he would understand if Lyanis wasn't ready for that kind of relationship. Some people just weren't, or were ready, but didn't want a relationship like that.

"I apologize in advance for this, but I'll have to decline on the relationship you're offering. You never gave me the chance to say that I was already interested in someone else," Lyanis said in a small voice, nervous since he'd never rejected anyone before. He wasn't sure how Tiberius was going to take this.

At this, the slightly taller turian let out a small sigh and stood up. He walked over and stood in front of Lyanis, whose eyes shone with slight fear as Tiberius stood over him. Tiberius slowly lifted his hand to Lyanis, palm open and rightward facing. Lyanis took it and yelped when Tiberius hoisted him off the couch and into a hug.

"Hey man, I understand. Some guys just don't want that kind of relationship," Tiberius said after releasing the smaller turian with a laugh. "You obviously want Ascher much more than I want you, and not necessarily in the same way."

Lyanis blushed. "That obvious huh?"

"You have no idea."

"Great," Lyanis said, rolling his eyes as his blush got stronger.

They talked a little bit more after that, eventually saying goodbye and leaving Tiberius' room. He walked down the way he came, with a little bit of haste, he noticed. But it didn't matter; he needed to get to Ascher before anyone else stole him away like Tiberius almost did to Ascher with Lyanis. Pretty soon, Lyanis made it to the mess hall where Ascher was still sitting at that same table, except he was watching a small flame that he passed between his fingers. Lyanis started walking even faster towards Ascher, almost jogging towards the hybrid. Ascher's head popped up after hearing the turian's footsteps, the small flame he was juggling extinguished instantly.

"Hey, how'd it-" Ascher asked in a curious and even voice, becoming cut off when Lyanis grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him over to the far wall of the mess hall, planting him against the surface. Doing it with a little more force than he wanted, there was a dull thud that echoed through the mess hall when Lyanis shoved Ascher into the wall. Ascher opened his mouth to ask the turian what he was doing, but was never able to speak. Lyanis grabbed the slightly shorter man by the shoulders and crashed their lips together.

Ascher's eyes flew open, but they slowly closed as and kissed back as he reached his hand up and cupped the side of the turian's warm face with his soft hand. The dark brown plates felt warm against his palm, his hand tracing up and down them, eventually reaching up to the top of the turian's head and stroking his fringe. This made Lyanis moan into the kiss and blush, finally pulling away a few seconds later.

He let out a small laugh after seeing the blush on Ascher's face, sporting one of his own. Ascher's eyes slowly slid open as he looked back at Lyanis, his heart feeling like it could fly. He laughed a little bit as well.

"Can I speak now?" Ascher asked with a smile after being cut off twice by the turian.

"I suppose," Lyanis smirked, making Ascher blush harder. Darn that wonderful smirk of his.

"I really, really like you Lyanis Starque," Ascher laughed, his statement coming out breath heavy.

"I really, really like you to Ascher Grey," Lyanis responded with a grin.


	6. Fire and Frost

A man in a white hood stood on top of one of the apartment buildings of Omega, overlooking the dark district. He wore silver armor on both shoulders and his upper arms, the rest of them covered by sharp, spiky black gauntlets with blue crystals embedded in the backs of the hands. Under his white hood sat a piece of scale-like black armor, one with a strap wrapping around the front of his torso which held numerous throwing knives, as well as ripped black cargo jeans and black combat boots.

The white haired man was looking for someone. He knelt down on the metallic roof of the building, paying close attention to the few people passing by. Blue Suns mercenaries patrolled the area in groups of four to five, their command center nearby. The blue and white armored bodies walked up and down the streets, groups passing each other occasionally. The man overlooking the stronghold stroked his chin thoughtfully. He'd been on top of that building for a good while now, an hour it felt like, surveying the patrols. Their typical numbers, their paths, their typical firepower. He preferred stealth, taking out as little people as possible as he made his way towards his targets. He preferred not to kill, only doing so when necessary, but the guards he came across usually made it necessary.

He stood and walked to the side of the building facing a narrow alley. He shrugged his shoulders back slowly, a pair of light blue frozen wings slowly unfurling from his back as he did. He stretched them out backwards and groaned, the sound of ice cracking sounding a few times. The joints were cracking, not the wings. He gave them a few good flaps before hopping of the edge of the building into the narrow alleyway, his wings slowing his fall to a safe speed. Once he reached the bottom, he rolled his shoulder blades together, the large aerial appendages retracting into his upper back. He then reached down to his waist, unhooking a light blue mask from it. He was about to put it on when he heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle being cocked.

"Freeze. What are you, who are you, and how did you get in here?" a deep voice rumbled to his left. The man in the white hood turned his head to see a Blue Suns krogan pointing his rifle at him. He mentally kicked himself, having not watched the alleyway patrols enough to know he was dropping in in the middle of one. A pale, almost white scarred face stared back at a slightly less scarred face, the latter waiting for an answer as he stood unwavering.

"'Freeze'. Funny you should say that," the white-haired man said in an even-toned voice. It was a good thing the alleyway was so dark and narrow. Dark so that no one but the man and the merc would see what would happen next; narrow since the sound would be condensed, forced to bounce around two walls crammed together in almost uncomfortably close proximity. The noise would be soft and weak by the time it escaped the long alleyway, leaving almost no chance for the man to be detected by any other Blue Suns personnel.

Before the krogan could inquire as to what the hooded man meant, said man's hand flew out at a blinding speed, small, cold, white crystals flew from his gauntlet encased palm, the gem on the back of his glowing light blue as he did. Having acted too fast for the krogan to retaliate, the shards of ice broke straight through the merc's barrier, embedding themselves in his armor as if it were made of soft clay. The krogan dropped his rifle and fell over with a thud, croaking sharply as he was hit. The man walked over to the immobilized krogan and knelt down next to him, temporarily hooking his mask back onto his waist.

"You asked what my name was," the white hooded man said, repeating the krogan's question from before. The only answer he got was the sound of the krogan choking on his own blood as it pooled into his throat. The man sighed and forcefully closed the krogan's mouth, freezing it shut as the oversized toad voiced his protest, continuing to cough on the blood filling his mouth. "Cyrus Orfthrix, although around here, I'm known as…" Cyrus trailed off quietly, raising his closed fist above the krogan and threw his hand open, the tiny shards thickening and elongating into individual javelins in less than a second. The krogan gave a short, hoarse cry that was muffled by his sealed lips. But the light faded from his eyes, which Cyrus closed with his fingers. "Like I'd ever tell anyone of you my identity, even if you're going to die." Hopefully he wouldn't have to torture kill anyone else this evening like he just did; it killed him just as much as it did his victims to have to do that.

He stood up, unhooking the mask from his belt and pressing it to his face. The mask sprouted a frozen stem that worked its way past Cyrus temples and wrapped around the back of his head, connecting with the other frozen stem that had worked it's way around the side of the Luxionan's head. He turned back to the direction of where the krogan came from, silently stepping through it to see what lied in the opening beyond it. Coming up to the corner, he looked out and saw what appeared to be a shipping yard. Large maroon colored crates were littered around the yard, most of them stacked on top of one another. There were mercs scattered across the yard, most of them helping transporting different supplies different places. A group of krogans came up to a crate across the yard and took some heavy looking crates, cradling them in their arms as they walked back to the main complex, a group of armed turians making a ring around them before they headed back. He wondered what that was about. He'd definitely have to ask Darner about it when he went to talk with him.

Cyrus lifted his left gauntlet up to his face, touching the gem on the back of the spiked hand with his right hand. The gem projected a light blue console with multiple categories on it: communications, suit abilities, green leaf poultice dispension (his race's version of medi-gel dispension), as well as an ammo check, which applied to both his supply of knives and his supply of bullets. There were also specific sub-categories under these different categories. Under communications was a list of all of Cyrus' different contacts, under suit abilities was a list of rechargeable abilities his suit could perform. Of course, that was for his full suit which he would only use for the most critical missions. This mission wasn't one of those missions. The suit he was wearing as of that moment was actually seen as casual wear back on Luxion, minus the gauntlets and the torso armor.

The full list of his suit abilities included Black Ice, Berg Grenades, Narcoleptic Vapor, Flamethrowers, Pressurized Water Cannons, Shadow Clouds, Flash Grapeshots, and Smoke Grenades. Black Ice was a self-cloaking mechanism that could be provided by his gauntlets alone since he was born with Ice Dominion, Flamethrowers and Smoke Grenades are self-explanatory, Pressurized Water Cannons were basically fire hoses on steroids. If someone was hit by one, the impact of hitting the ground or a wall not only knocked them out cold, but sometimes provided them with whiplash. Shadow Clouds were akin to Smoke Grenades except that the user of these weapons of dark energy could see what they were doing while the victims of the Cloud were completely blind for a short time. The Narcoleptic Vapor was essentially sleeping gas on steroids. Flash Grapeshots were basically Flash Grenades except, as the name implied, a grapeshot was used instead. This was just for a larger area of coverage. Finally, Berg grenades were grenades that when detonated, covered a small area in thick layers of ice.

Due to the fact that he wasn't wearing his armor in full, he could only use his Black Ice and Berg Grenades abilities. Again, he was completely fine with that since he wasn't, for example, invading a Vangel stronghold on his own. Though when he used to do that, it was very rarely to take down a Vangel stronghold; usually if he was sent alone, it was to infiltrate a stronghold to gain information or to steal schematics for a weapon or something like that. But this wasn't a Vangel stronghold.

Other than that, he could still use green leaf poultice dispension, or GLPD, but he could only use the minimal amount. The command for that if he were in the middle of the battle or under heavy fire would be something like 'Poultice Dispension - Minimal'. But he only needed to use it when he suffered a wound that could end up being lethal.

"Black Ice," Cyrus whispered, causing both blue gems on both his gauntlets to glow light blue as an energy with an appearance akin to liquid pooled from the gems, covering his gauntlets, reaching up his arms and eventually covering the rest of his body, rendering him invisible to almost everything. A timer appeared in the top left corner of the visor behind of his frozen mask, beginning at five minutes and starting every time he moved, stopping only when he stopped moving. It didn't matter how fast or slow he moved, it would still tick away like a normal timer. Cyrus had had practice in rationing his movements in stealth situations like this one, having learned how to move silently at any speed.

But there was one fatal flaw that accompanied the Black Ice cloaking ability: it didn't cover heat signatures. So, if he was attempting to infiltrate an enemy base that utilized heat sensor technology, he'd have to get crafty. Usually he'd just use the Black Ice then pick off the guards of whatever base he was infiltrating one by one, with the Narcoleptic Vapor of course. He'd gotten in and out of enemy bases without detection thanks to the Black Ice, though in some cases with only seconds to spare.

So he sneaked his way out of the alleyway, the timer beginning to tick away in the corner of his vision. The yard was pretty spacious, many mercs running left and right, either carrying supplies or protecting supply groups or standing guard on the catwalks on the complex or giving status reports to superiors. He pressed his body flat against a red shipping crate, peering around the corner. There were still mercs walking or running about, but the path to the open garage of the complex was relatively clear. He unsheathed a dagger from his belt, counting himself lucky that the Black Ice cloaked that as well.

Cyrus stepped around the corner and resumed his silent run, only slowing down to let other mercs cross his path so he wouldn't bump into them and blow his cover. He glanced at the guards standing on the main outer walkway. Cyrus caught a glimpse of the line of men standing watch; they were mostly turians, a couple batarians up there. Half of them were wielding heavy shotguns and the other half wielding light shotguns. Like their colleagues, they sported medium, Blue Suns issue armor, which was okay armor, but it wasn't the best.

He cut a quick path across the black floor of the shipping yard, skillfully avoiding mercs along the way. He ran quickly and silently under the raised-high garage door, making his way successfully into the complex. The timer read '4:07:93' when he checked it after stopping by a mech. The metal was white and gleaming in the garage light, the faintest inkling of the odor of a fresh shining still present. The golden glass dome was sparkling with new material, guns and cannons locked and loaded, these mechs were fresh off the boat. Blue Suns had a lot of money it looked like; but then again, they were the most infamous merc band in the Terminus Systems. Cyrus was just the littlest bit tempted to take it for a joyride, but he digressed.

His unseen hood flapping behind him as he ran, he made his way over to the elevator. He assumed that Mr. Vosque would be in his command center at the top of the complex building, giving orders, reading reports, doing typical merc-band-leader-stuff. Just his luck, a turian walked in. He hit the button at the top of the console, folding his hands behind his back after he did so. His next victim. His next victim that he wouldn't kill that is. He was just going to have a little fun.

The turian in question bore a dark grey complexion with light purple markings on the very bottom of his chin plate as well as his mandibles. He had some tiny scars and scratches in his facial plates, the most notable being a deep fissure in his right mandible. Making sure to be quiet about it, in the small space of the elevator Cyrus started to circle the larger turian, not unlike how a buzzard circles its prey. He observed the well worn armor the turian sported other than observing the timer in the corner of his vision as it slowly ticked away. The Blue Suns logo was almost completely unrecognizable, there were so many scratches and burns from a multitude of things. Because of this, his armor was more silver than blue. It was like a starry sky, but instead of night and stars, his armor was made of silver metal with spots of blue here and there, remnants of the armor it once was.

There were deep, black scratches gouging the armor, most notably on the torso. Cyrus couldn't believe this merc was still wearing this armor. About the only thing he could imagine still working was his barrier and maybe his biotic amp, if he was even a biotic. He knew he shouldn't judge what could be a future opponent, but this guy must've been the worst merc in Blue Suns right now. There was this air of confidence surrounding him that was so thick, that radiated so much arrogance that it might as well have served as his armor.

Cyrus stopped walking in the middle of whatever number of circles this was, he wasn't counting, right in front of the turian. He took this time to check the timer in the corner of his vision. His eyes almost got bigger than his mask when he saw it was at '00:00:01'.

He cursed. Out loud. The stupid timer counted this as movement and caused Cyrus to materialize right in front of the turian just as the elevator doors opened behind him. Said turian jumped slightly in shock, using his biotic throw on Cyrus which sent him sailing to the end of the hall into a hard landing on the floor. Of course, this didn't do much to the seasoned soldier, who did a handspring back onto his feet. His mask stood still, gripping his face snuggly. The basic-shield shaped mask of sky blue with the snowflake shaped eyes and frozen stalactite head slightly unnerved the turian walking down the hall cautiously. It was supposed to do that.

"How did you get in here?" The turian's mandibles fluttered, showing his nerves before he forced them still. Cyrus read suspicion, anger, and arrogance in his opponent's face. He found this interesting since the deep oceans staring back at his masked frozen lakes shone with slight fear, having witnessed a completely new ability as shown by this masked infiltrator.

"Well it was kind of easy since you guys left your front door open," Cyrus said, smiling under his mask as he slowly wrapped his covered fingers around the frozen dagger in his belt, having sheathed it once he entered the elevator. Instead of using the dagger for close combat, he threw it to the ground, the dagger stabbing halfway up the blade into the floor. For a second, nothing happened.

"And the point in that was?" The turian said, raising his hand cannon so that it was level with his masked opponent's face. But, his confusion didn't end with the spectacle in the elevator. He watched as the frozen dagger seemed to melt, except it didn't melt. It shifted into a substance that pooled under his greaves and stretched across the entire hall, solidifying into a substance that looked just like ice. He found that it was in fact ice as he tried to step forward, only to slip and fall on the frozen floor.

"To give me an advantage," Cyrus said, smirking under his mask. He then jumped in the air, hiking his legs up as an ice skate popped out of the bottom of each boot, razor sharp and thin-bladed. The otherwise 180 degree blades were edged in a thin layer of light blue ice that curved upwards on both ends. He then kicked off the ground, sending himself forward with incredible force, curling his arm as he rammed into the turian, sending him flying back just as he managed to get back up. The purple marked turian hit the elevator doors, denting them with the force with which he was rammed with. His eyes closed as he slid to the floor in a heap, groaning in pain on his way down.

Cyrus nodded, satisfied with his work. He spun around on a blade and skated casually down the hallway. He passed a few rooms on his way down, though most of them were either interrogation rooms or empty labs. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all a boring metallic silver color. He thought that the Blue Suns would at least color their complexes a little more blue.

Eventually he came to the end of the hall where he stopped at a window. He looked out across the shipping yard and noticed that a few of the mercs were gathering around the alley he snuck out of. They were talking amongst themselves as a salarian wearing a visor walked up to the crowd, the mercs separating to let him through. He stepped into the alley where it was too dark to see him, though he stepped out a few seconds later. He leaned in close to a batarian and said something to him, the batarian nodded as he brought a couple fingers up to his ear and said something. A few seconds later, sirens began to wail as lights on the wall began to flash. He'd been found out.

At least, they knew there was an infiltrator in their midst, just not his identity. Cyrus looked to his left and saw a door to his left, a small window in the metal rectangle. He peered through it, noticing that line of guards he saw on that balcony when he was heading for the base. He then glanced out the window he was looking out of earlier to see mercs scrambling in all directions, but not to handle shipping items; all of them were armed and most were flooding into the base while others stood outside, waiting for him to come out so they could shoot him.

He then looked down the hallway at the essentially broken elevator doors and the unconscious turian lying against them to make sure he was safe for a few minutes, which it appeared he was. He skated to the door to the stairwell and raised an arm, his palm open. A whitish blue blast came from his palm, freezing the door shut instantly. His ice was nearly impossible to break and took a long time to melt, even when exposed to high temperatures, so they'd literally have to climb up the side of the building and break in through that one window in order to get to him.

He then heard the sound of a door opening at the end of the hall, pounding boots and numerous thuds as multiple mercs slipped on the frozen floor. Cyrus turned on a blade and saw all the mercs from that balcony he was looking at had charged into the hall, only to slip and fall into a pile of bodies squirming to stand up, and failing again. To add insult to injury, Cyrus took a Berg Grenade from his belt, pressed the button on top, and tossed it at the pile of squirming mercs. He saw them try to shuffle and slide away from the grenade as it beeped slowly then frantically, eventually exploding in a white fog as they screamed in fear. Once the fog cleared, multiple heads, arms, and legs were sticking out of a small iceberg, the arms and legs waving frantically and the heads shaking back and forth.

Cyrus laughed to himself, wrapping his hood around his upper arms to protect them from the gunfire he was about to run through. He'd done stupider things. For example, he'd ran towards a platoon of soldiers shooting at him, rather than running away from the gunfire, or to a place where he could shoot back. He'd walked out of that mess with only a few bullet wounds. But considering he was going to run through some gunfire, especially from guns considerably less advanced than Luxionan or Vangelic arms, he'd be fine. Though, the only real difference between this galaxy's guns and his galaxy's guns were the speed at which the bullets traveled, and the cooldown time between reloads. The guns in this galaxy were just a bit slower than the ones he'd fought with previously.

He sauntered down the hall, his skates clinking against the frozen floor amidst the other noises of other mercs trying to get in through the stairwell door, as well as the grunts of the mercs encased in ice. Those were the only sounds that filled the hall as Cyrus stopped at the entrance to the balcony, plotting his entrance into Vosque's main office. He could take the door to the balcony off it's hinges and use that as a shield against the bullets, but that was the safe way. The safe way was almost never fun, especially when he could just sprint at the door and kick it off it's hinges, most likely sending it into the room he was trying to get into. That sounded more fun.

Cyrus made his decision. He began to release his Luxionan adrenaline, strength and endurance filling his body like medicine being injected into his system. A warmth spread through his limbs and torso, loosening his joints to a fully relaxed state and using his second heart to pump extra blood through his sense. When the blood reached his brain, all of his battle senses became amplified. His thought process, reaction time, as well as his hearing, sight, smell, and taste. Cyrus' teeth became sharp like fangs, nails sharpening into claws, hair taking on a stiff, spiky quality. His frost blue eyes took on an iridescent glow, muscles flexed; he could hear the individual heartbeats of the mercs trapped in ice, accelerated in urgency as they tried to escape. Then he could hear the beats of the hearts of the mercs outside, some slow in anticipation, others quick in a mix of fear and excitement.

He took a deep breath, smelling the sweat of exhausted and anxious mercs. But the most prevalent smell in the air was fear. Thick and heavy, almost like the building was engulfed in flames with the smoke flooding the air inside and outside the complex. Cyrus grinned, baring his fangs, the white teeth gleaming in the light of the hallway. He let out a ferocious growl, mainly to evoke fear from the mercs behind him as he got into a running stance, his skates folding and retracting back into his boots. He loved engaging his Battle High; it let him reach down to his alien roots and embrace them with a vice grip, turning him half-beast, half-man.

Cyrus opened his mouth wide and let out a roar that seemed to shake the entire building, and charged. Having started with such great force, he'd cracked the frozen floor considerably in his sprint for Vosque's command center. The flats of his boots pounded against the steel walk of the balcony, leaving dents in the material. The Blue Suns army waiting for him in the shipping yard opened fire, but they were too slow. Cyrus glanced to his right where the bullets were surging towards him, but they seemed slow. This was normal with the Battle High, especially since his strength didn't just apply to his upper body. It applied, which made each running step propel him further with each pound of his foot. Further than when he'd normally run though.

Within a couple seconds, Cyrus had reached the door, choosing to deliver a jumping kick to the metallic rectangle. It folded in on itself a little bit, a bit more than he anticipated, but still not very much. It flew off its hinges, slamming into the wall inside the command center with an airy clang. Cyrus stepped inside, quickly grabbing the door, punching it back into shape and freezing it into it's original place in the doorframe. He turned his head to see a white, bald human man aiming a pistol at his face.

"You may have been lucky enough to avoid the bullets of my mercenaries in the shipping yard, but I think your luck has just run out," the chrome dome sneered, his finger squeezing the trigger of his hand cannon, popping off a single shot at the Luxionan's skull.

His Battle High still engaged, the bullet seemed to fly towards him lazily, as if it'd rather be doing something other than killing him at that moment. For a few moments, he just watched it spiral closer and closer to his face, the metal inching closer for each second that passed by. When the bullet had gotten pretty close to his forehead, he moved his head to the side and let the bullet slowly whiz past, watching it as it went. He decided he'd had enough after a few more Battle High seconds, raising his hand and shooting a couple blasts of ice. The first one froze Vosque's hand that was holding the gun to the console he was originally sitting at, the gun included. The second one did the same to his empty hand, just to be safe.

Darner wore a shocked and horrified look on his face as Cyrus sauntered up to him with folded arms. Even with the sound of gunfire at the frozen door, he acted as though he had all the time in the world. Eventually, Cyrus had gotten nice up close and personal with Vosque, his frozen mask radiating cold onto the latter's face he was so close. His eyes scanned up and down his captive's face, reading every tiny and big scar, curve of his features, the light in his eyes.

He was obviously afraid. His eyes were stored with fear like a vial would store blood, his face was twisted into a grimace. He even reeked of fear, like one would reek of sweat and grime after not washing dirty laundry. Meanwhile, Cyrus lips curved upwards into a ferocious smirk, baring his fangs under his mask. He was going to have fun with this interrogation.

"Darner Vosque," he whispered out in a low toned drawl, his feral side darkening his voice into something predatorial, his words coming out gruff and raspy. "Leader of the infamous Blue Suns, the biggest mercenary group in the Terminus Systems. What a weakling."

This was enough to fire up the merc leader, causing him to headbutt the masked stranger mocking him. He found this to be a mistake, his nose smashing and flattening against the cold, thick mask in front of him. The small, sickening sound of a bone cracking sounded when his nose made contact with the frozen wall in front of him, the merc leader growling out in pain. Cyrus didn't even flinch. In fact, his smirk grew into a wide grin as he leaned in even closer to the bleeding merc, chuckling to himself sinisterly.

"Oh maybe I was wrong, maybe you're more feisty than I thought. But, I'm not here to torture you, which makes a part of me disappointed, but that's besides the point," Cyrus rasped, dropping his grin and composing himself for a more serious tone. "About a year ago, I sent a friend of mine to a space prison run by one of your higher ranking members, one whom you may know as Warden Kuril. But, I heard from some of your mercs that he escaped.

"Now to clarify, I only sent my friend there to appease my dangerous and emotionally unstable sister, in hopes of stabilizing her. Although, once I expressed this opinion, that plan backfired. This friend of mine looks to have killed another friend of mine, one who was very close with my sister. Having made an enemy of my unstable sister, I was wanting to find this friend before my sister does. Lord only knows what would happen if she got her vengeance-seeking hands on him."

"And I'm supposed to know where he is?" Darner Vosque said, spitting the blood flowing out of his nostrils onto Cyrus' frozen mask.

Cyrus calmly stepped back, wiping the dark crimson liquid from his mask with a wipe he produced from his pocket. He discarded it on the floor, keeping his feral side from ripping out the man's jugular. The thing about engaging his Battle High was that for Luxionans and Vangelics alike, it brought a primal part of their being to the surface so they could use it for battle, hence the name 'Battle High'. But they otherwise had to suppress it, otherwise they would revert back to the murderous feral beasts they were tens of thousands of years ago.

So in an effort to reach this man on a more reasonable level, Cyrus gambled by disengaging his Battle High, the claws under his gauntlets and boots shrank back into regular nails, as did his fangs dull and become teeth and his spiny hair became soft again. All of this happening in a gigantic exhale. The extra dose of adrenaline drained from his limbs and chest, his two hearts slowing their beats as the monster inside him was caged once again, dragged clawing and biting and roaring into the deepest depths of his subconscious.

"Alright," Cyrus said back in his normal, non-gruff and non-raspy, light and smooth voice, "now that he's gone, we can talk. I just need to know where my friend is, then I'll be out of your guys' hair, in a manner of speaking."

"You'll have to be more specific than 'my friend'. I need a name here," he inquired.

"Ascher Grey," Cyrus said, a floodgate of memories opening at the vocal mention of his friend. Missions they went on, taking down crime bosses, taking jobs for those that were in danger, the three of them were kind of like superheroes. Galactic superheroes. Now isn't that an awesome title? A self-given title, sure, but a freaking awesome title all the same.

Although his best memories weren't when he and his friends were off do-gooding in the galaxy, but when they were off just being friends and reveling in that. Those times in their ship when they'd sing along to the songs Cyrus and Roxie loved when they were growing up on Earth, sharing funny stories from their respective pasts, and just having fun together. And going to clubs on the different planets they explored; they really, really enjoyed that.

"Now if you would unfreeze my hand so I can contact Kuril," Vosque stated.

Cyrus nodded, raising his hand and slowly making a waving motion, the ice turning to white fog that came to and floated around his gauntlet. He kept his hand poised in case Vosque decided to try anything. The bald man did as he said he would, his fingers flying over the console as a hologram came up. The image was colored omni-tool-orange, a turian in Blue Suns armor showing up in the image.

"You contacted me sir?" Kuril said in his slightly deep voice. "What do you need?"

"Not me, him," Vosque growled as Cyrus stepped into the turian's field of view.

Cyrus closed his fingers around the chin of his mask, feeling it release its grip on his skull as the clasps disappeared. He pulled the frozen visage off and reattached it to his belt, placing his hands on the console to lean on as his frozen lakes fell on the turian for the first time.

"Warden Kuril? Cyrus Hoffman. Nice to finally meet you, face to face that is," the Luxionan greeted with an even face.

The turian put on a look of slight confusion. "And what are you doing in my boss's office?" He crossed his arms and arched a brow plate.

"I'll let him explain that after I leave. Is my understanding correct when I say that Ascher escaped from your prison?" Cyrus stated, causing the turian in the hologram's face to change from confusion to stress. A mischievous look crossed his face at the man's reaction. "Good to know. But between you and me, you can keep extorting my sister. I only took him to you because she made me, but don't tell her about this little deal. Wouldn't help our relationship with how it's going right now."

Kuril just gave him a look before shaking his head. He opened his mouth to say something, but the sound of a crash followed by screaming and gunfire cut him off. Cyrus flicked his eyes up as he glanced outside the control room. A woman with auburn hair in a black hood and scarlet armor similar to Cyrus' was fighting her way through the sea of blue and white-armored mercs, heading towards the complex it looked like.

"Deploy your Atlas mechs," Cyrus suggested, unfreezing Vosque's other hand and ending the feed with Kuril. In turn, Vosque held the pistol to the side of Cyrus' head. "Trust me on this one, you'll need them if you want me to take care of her."

"And why should I trust you after you break into my base and kill one of my men?" Darner stated, his grip tightening on his hand cannon.

"My sister will kill much more of your men than I did, will torture you indefinitely for information on my friend's whereabouts, and will most likely kill you anyway," Cyrus explained, grabbing his mask from his belt and re-attaching it to his face. He got off the console once Vosque lowered his hand cannon, allowing the merc leader to make the necessary commands.

"All personnel turn your attention to killing this second intruder. The first intruder was a freelancer I hired to test our security, and will help us to get rid of this woman," Darner said over the PA system before moving to a separate comm channel. "Deploy the Atlas mechs to destroy this woman; she isn't human."

Cyrus pointed his open hand at the ice covering the door, causing it to shrink down into nothing. The door fell over and the turian from earlier came in, glaring at Cyrus before turning his attention to his boss. "Sir, need me to take it from here?"

"Yes Illan. Work with Mr. Hoffman to eradicate this threat. And Mr. Hoffman," Vosque said, reaching into his pocket and tossing him a small, round object. "My spare comm. I trust you'll get the job done."

"Uh-huh." With that, the merc leader fled, which reminded Cyrus to unfreeze the frozen sections of the base with a wave of his hand.

Once Vosque left, the turian beside Cyrus stopped glaring at him and started speaking commands into the main comm channel. The mercs outside stopped trying to swarm her and instead took cover. Cyrus looked out the window and saw the mercs remaining in their positions, none of them shooting at Roxanne. Meanwhile, said Luxionan threw her arms out and shouted a challenge, and proceeded to mock the mercs it looked like.

"What are you doing? I thought you were changing them to a better position to attack her! Not stare at her!" Cyrus shouted at the turian to his left, whose face soured at this treatment.

"Well she's like you isn't she? Vosque told me to work with you, and I am! Tell me what to do, and I'll tell them what to do!" Illan shouted back at the smaller man, throwing his arm out in a gesture to the mercs outside.

Cyrus sighed and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to think. Rushing her obviously wouldn't work; they were trained for that kind of situation. They were also trained for situations where it appeared to them that they were in the middle of a firing range. Although, the two of them were mainly trained for situations involving melee combat. That is, having to face down a Vangel and claim victory, killing said Vangel only if absolutely necessary. The majority of the members of either race were masters of melee weapons and only used ballistic weapons in air or undersea battles. Those were the parameters of the ongoing war between the Luxionans and the Vangels; ground, undersea, and air battles. Basically if he was able to have Illan, he believed that's what Vosque called the turian, surround Roxanne with higher up snipers, she'd become too overwhelmed to fight back.

"Well?! My men are waiting out there!" Illan yelled, breaking Cyrus from his thoughts. The Luxionan turned his face back up to the turian and glared at him. To spite him, he stayed like that for a couple minutes. When the turian opened his mouth to let out another dual-toned demand, Cyrus spoke. "If you can get a team of snipers to surround her and open fire, she'll be too overwhelmed to fight back and will be forced to retreat."

"You could have told me that a couple minutes ago," the turian ground out, his sub-harmonics displaying his intense displeasure. He relayed this information to all the mercs under his command, instructing all the mercs that weren't the absolute best with snipers to fall back and retreat to the safety of the complex.

"You're right. I could have. But I decided instead to take enjoyment in the visible anger caused by my purposeful silence," Cyrus grinned devilishly at the taller alien. "One more thing though, tell them to take non-lethal shots. If you end up killing my sister, I'll end up killing all of you."

"That's your sister?! How… Nevermind, I don't want to know," Illan started. He then turned his face back to the console, laying a finger on the button that allowed him to give commands on the secure channel. "Take your time with this woman; only shoot the non-lethal parts of her body. We'll let her die from blood loss as punishment for setting foot in this base."

"Are your men in position yet?" Cyrus asked the second-in-command next to him.

"Not yet. I was just about to give them the command to mobilize. Why?" Illan asked.

"They're going to need cover. If my sister sees them moving on top of the crates out there, they're as good as dead," Cyrus said as he headed for the door. "You guys need a distraction."

"Can't guarantee they won't hit you while you're out there keeping her attention," Illan called after him, his deeper tones flat with indifference.

"I'll live."

With that, Cyrus exited the command center onto the catwalk. He hopped over the guard rails and down to the floor of the shipping yard. His sister, who stood still across the yard, soured at the sight of her brother as he walked towards her. She wasn't here for him. She was here for that low-life merc leader Darner Vosque; she had some questions for him. And she was going to get answers out of him in any way she deemed necessary. Really, she had been looking forward to 'talking' with the leader of the great Blue Suns mercenary group. She'd heard that they were powerful; she was excited to see how powerful they looked like after she maimed their leader, leaving him alive and broken to set an example for the other merc gangs. Roxanne Orfthrix wanted answers as to where her beloved's killer was, and she would get those answers. So it would be wise of them to submit to her.

As her brother neared her, he drew those hilt-less sabers of his. She was going to love fighting with her brother again. She'd become a considerably better fighter since the last time they had a good tousle. She was ready this time. This time, Roxanne was not going to lose. She was going to teach her pathetic little brother to stay out of her way, or he would suffer the consequences. He needed to learn that when someone takes the life of someone she loves, she gets to take their life in return. It was only fair.

"Ah. Cyrus. I shouldn't be surprised that you're here. You want to find Ascher as bad as I do, yet you want to keep him alive. Why don't you remind me why you think that fletch live?" Roxanne spoke, her once bright and warm voice now turned dark and cold by the monsoon of negative emotions swirling around inside of her.

"I simply believe that there's more to Tobias' death than we saw in his apartment. For once, just think about it. Tobias was always a little off. We always had to keep him from killing our targets most times. Other times we'd walk in on him torturing them, physically or mentally. You remember what he was capable of," Cyrus explained, recalling one memory. They were hunting down a corrupt diplomat who was accepting political favors in exchange for keeping quiet about a drug ring that was going on inside his own office. The four of them snuck into that office when they'd found out the diplomat was working late one evening. Ascher and Roxanne were tasked with monitoring the security cameras while Tobias and Cyrus went off to find the diplomat.

The diplomat, a batarian, had an Eclipse security detail patrolling the office. Cyrus and Tobias were able to dispose of them fairly quickly as they made their way to the batarian's office. The last group they had to deal with was right outside the diplomat's office, so Cyrus decided to tell Tobias to go on ahead while he held off the last batch of mercs. Tobias agreed instantly, locking himself in the office with the batarian as soon as the chance presented itself, leaving Cyrus to KO the remaining mercs.

It had taken longer than Cyrus expected to dispatch the last batch of mercs, but he made it out relatively unscathed. When Cyrus came up to the office, he wasn't aware that Tobias had locked the door, and was confused by this action. Why, he wondered, did Tobias feel the need to lock the door? It was up to the both of them to interrogate the diplomat and set everything straight. It was when he heard a scream come from inside the diplomat's office that he began to quickly hack the door to the office, the screen showing the door to be locked quickly switched from red to unlocked green. Cyrus readied his daggers and charged in, only to find the batarian on his knees with tears streaking down his face. And Tobias standing above him with a sadistic smirk on his face as he stared down at the other alien, causing him Divine Creator only knew how much mental and false physical anguish.

"Tobias! What the hell?!" Cyrus remembered screaming as he shoved the red and black haired man, causing him to lose concentration and release his telepathic hold on the batarian diplomat. Said diplomat's eyes rolled into the back of his head as he slumped on the floor, completely knocked out.

"What? I was just _having a little fun_ ," Tobias sneered, annunciating the last words of that statement sinisterly. He then began to make his exit, turning his back on the ice wielder as he sprouted his wings, keeping them tucked while they were inside. "Come on then, we can stop his little drug operation in other ways. And don't worry; he'll remember the pain and nothing else once he wakes up."

And it started like that. The moment they exited the building and took flight, heading for their base of operations, Cyrus flew up next to Ascher. The angular faced man was silent as he always was during their flights home, as he was usually lost in thought. Cyrus, like Roxanne, Tobias he wasn't so sure about anymore, worried about him whenever he was like this. Having the traumatic past he did, he was lucky that he was still able to hang on, though thinking about it further would only cause him to slip away. However, he did seem to notice Cyrus fly up next to him, his stone face crumbling into a welcoming smile.

"Hey. Something on your mind?" Ascher asked his friend, lightly touching his red hot wing tip to Cyrus' ice cold one in a friendly gesture. Cyrus' face lit up a little bit at the gesture, returning the touch with one of his own.

"I could ask you the same thing," Cyrus said, the tenseness he was feeling shrinking a little bit as he spoke with his friend as they flew through the twilit Illium skyline.

"I was just thinking," Ascher said with a dismissive wave of his hand before tucking it back to his brown-armored side.

"About?"

"This and that, not as much of it was about my awesome upbringing as you might think. Not this time at least," Ascher said with a mellow ease that Cyrus had only heard from him when they were goofing off.

"Really? Well that's really good I suppose," Cyrus stated, his tone involuntarily dipping a little bit.

"Not to repeat myself or anything but, something wrong? When you first approached me, you seemed a bit worried about something. And please just don't say anything if that something concerns me. I feel fine, really," Ascher assured him with a comforting smile, brushing his wing against Cyrus' again reassuringly.

"Honey, I think you'd know if I was about to pester you about your current mental state," the blue-winged Luxionan laughed.

"You do have a point. And I would really appreciate it if you wouldn't go 'stereotypical gay man' on me," Ascher chuckled along with Cyrus, his cheeks turning a little red at the tone Cyrus used.

"I know. Anyway, you saw what Tobias was doing to that batarian diplomat?" Cyrus said, moving in a little closer as his voice fell in volume.

"There weren't any security cams in his office. What did he do?"

"He put a mental hold on the politician and was using it to torture him, and he looked like he was having fun with it too," Cyrus said quietly to the hybrid, whose face twisted in confusion.

"What? Why would he do that? He knew you and him were supposed to interrogate him, not torture him," Ascher stated back, looking up to where Roxanne was flying ahead of them. She was talking with Tobias, their wing tips touching every time they went into a glide; a gesture of love between them.

"I don't know. But we should definitely keep an eye on him," Cyrus said.

"Agreed."

Cyrus was broken from his thoughts by his sister attempting to slash his face with one of her chakrams. He jumped back, dodging her attack easily. He engaged his skates and began to circle around his sister, staring her down as he waited for her next attack. It came quickly as she did a horizontal spin jump and hurled one of her chakrams at him, the momentum she generated causing it to fly at him at a blinding speed. He jumped back onto his hands and brought his legs close to his torso as the buzzsaw of death raced over him.

Using the momentum that traveled from his legs, down his torso and through his arms, he sprang back up with ease. This time he decided to go on the offensive, delivering swift arcing kicks as he tried to cut his sister. Not enough to do any permanent damage; he also kept an ear out for when that chakram was going to come back around.

Roxanne was able to keep away from most of her brother's attacks with her wrist guards, the sharp blades sparking off the Enchantrum ore armor. Damn was he quick. She was just barely able to block or evade his kicks, sustaining some cuts from the attacks she couldn't stop. The acrobat in front of her was doing all sorts of jumps and spins to execute his attacks, leaving very little room for her to make any effective moves. She'd been taught to get up close and personal with leg-based fighters to gain an advantage, mainly because that suggested their knowledge of hand-to-hand combat was very limited or just plain nonexistent.

That was almost true for Cyrus. He wasn't much of a punching person, as they learned when they were growing up. They had a complicated past, having grown up on Earth. Originally, it was just them and their mom, living in a beautiful place called Peridot City. Roxanne remembered her childhood home fondly; it being the place where she was just a normal kid. Cyrus was always a pacifist growing up, which didn't help since his white hair and paler complexion made him a prime target for a group of bullies that they didn't see the end of until their senior year of high school.

Chandler Rockwell, grade A jerk. Star quarterback of the football team from 6th grade all the way till senior year. He was the big and popular kid that everybody knew and everybody loved in fourth grade and on. He moved to Peridot City over the summer and started picking on Cyrus from the first day of the school year, making up childish names for Cyrus that made fun of his white hair and pale skin, even calling him Dracula, which now just seemed like the epitome of stupid. It really bothered her brother, making him scared to go to school every day. This went on all the way through middle school, and only got worse as the years went by. It got especially bad in high school when Chandler somehow learned that Cyrus was gay. At that point, getting called faggot became the least of her brother's worries.

The bottom line was that, until they were thrust into the world of galactic conflict, Roxanne was the fighter for her brother and herself. Then all of this happened. They made a couple friends, one was going to be the person she was going to spend the rest of her life with, then the other went and killed him. Now she was going to find him and kill him, no matter the cost.

With this in mind, she took a leap back and caught her other chakram as it finally looped back around to her. She then charged at her brother, who did the same, and took her turn going on the offensive. He kicked at her in an arcing motion again, just like she predicted he would, so she slid onto her knee and sliced the back of the thigh of the leg Cyrus was standing on, causing him to let out a small cry of pain as fell to a knee. She made good use of their close proximity and took another swipe at him, only for him to grab her wrist and slam it against the hard ground, causing her to drop her weapon. She did the same with the other chakram, only to have the same thing happen. Cyrus put enough force in his arms to pin his sister to the ground, but not enough to hurt her badly. Her auburn hair fanned out on the ground beneath her as she was held down, intense frosty eyes coming down to stare angrily into sharp green ones burning with equal amounts of rage.

"You have to stop this Roxanne! This is insanity! Killing Ascher to avenge Tobias won't make you feel any better!" Cyrus screamed in his sister's face, unassured by her steely composure as she didn't flinch against any of his words. He put every ounce of worry and anger for his sister into that statement, yet it didn't do a thing.

"Of course you think that. You've never even had a boyfriend, much less one who was killed by someone you thought was your friend," Roxanne replied in quiet malice, every single word that left her mouth drenched in venom.

"Well you don't know Tobias like I came to know him. Rather, you don't know the truth about him. You didn't see all the people he tortured, maimed, flayed, or ruined. You didn't want to see it. You just wanted to see the Tobias that was your 'charming and amazing boyfriend'; the Tobias whom you were going to 'marry and spend the rest of your life with'. You only saw what he wanted you to see," Cyrus said as he stood up, staring down at his sister with a mixture of anger, disappointment, and pity.

"You shouldn't have just said that," Roxanne spat as she sprung back up, wanting to make her brother _hurt_ for what he just said.

"Now Illan," Cyrus said into his comm as his sister was about to swing at him, a bullet flying into her shoulder, causing her to stumble back. She growled in pain and charged at him again, only to have another bullet pierce her knee, making her scream in pain. As she struggled to stand up, a couple bullets hit her in both arms, the pain overtaking her focus to stand up, causing her to fall back to her knees. She glowered up at him, noticing the snipers perched up around the perimeter; that's why he'd come down to fight her. To distract her only to force her to retreat. "I think it's best you leave and think about the decisions you've made, Roxanne."

"I'll get you for this," his sister hissed at him, shrugging her shoulders back as two bright, burning-star-feathered wings sprouted from her back. She flapped them a couple of times before taking off into the Omega sky, illuminated by her blazing wings.

"I'm sure you will," Cyrus said to himself as he stared at his fleeing sister a little while longer before limping back towards the merc complex. He needed some medi-gel.

Roxanne's wounds had healed about halfway by the time she got back to her base of operations. A rundown warehouse on the outer edges of the district, which there seemed to be a lot of, was filled with rundown tech. She had come there once she'd tracked Ascher to Omega, which was a few months ago. Rather she found it after looking for a new base of operations away from Cyrus, and had found the front door to be unlocked. That meant that at the very least, the basic electric systems worked. So she walked inside, and the place had a giant screen that was nearly as big as the wall it was on. That was at the far wall of the room, the only room in the warehouse it seemed actually, with monitors lining left and right walls of the first level of the place.

These monitors were being tended to in sections of six displays by lavender, spherical drones the size of the world globe Mr. Perkins had back when she was in Global History her freshman year. The moment she set foot in the facility, the five drones on each side of the monitor walls turned to her, all of them except two, one on either side, came rushing up to Roxanne and surrounded her, the door closing and locking behind her.

She remembered being so freaked out, especially when all eight of those lavender drones spoke to her in unison.

"You are not Ms. Vairaen; who are you?" All eight of them had spoken in unison while the other two drones had turned their attention back to their section of monitors. In a way, they were adorable; their small rings at the outer center of their bodies serving as a sort of eye while two holographic panels rotated around their spherical bodies as they stared up at her.

"Roxanne," she remembered saying, surprised that she didn't stutter from her nerves.

They looked past her for a moment as if processing something. After a few moments they looked back up at her.

"There is no 'Roxanne' in Ms. Vairaen's databases. Intruder containment protocol initiated," they said in unison, the tone's of their automated voices appearing to stay neutral despite their command. A hissing noise began to sound as a white fog descended from the ceiling of the warehouse. This just scared her even more, provoking her into attempting to escape. But the moment she moved, the drone's gathered around her got much closer.

"Please do not resist. This fog will not kill you, but will put you to sleep until Ms. Vairaen comes back," one of the drones said, she wasn't sure which one.

"That's comforting," she remembered sighing to herself.

She was fine in the end. After some questioning at gunpoint, Roxanne struck a deal with Jennisara Vairaen. She would help the ex-Vangel with her pursuit of becoming a galactic technological superpower if she helped Roxanne locate Ascher. They even agreed to aid each other in their respective missions; Roxanne helping Sara with multi-person hacking projects and going out and going on tech robbing sprees. Sara would then help Roxanne in locating Ascher, which actually proved difficult even for the cyber-terrorist-queen of Vangyre. Fun fact: after learning about her Dominion, she joined the Seraphimian Syndicate purely as a front so she could steal all of their tech-based information and toys.

"Ah, Roxanne my dear! How was the information run?" Jennisara asked as she turned around to face the other woman, standing amidst little holographic windows in front of the main terminal with the wall-sized screen. She was information-hungry in general, though preferred information on the latest cutting-edge technology, as well as experimental technology that she could use to her benefit. She was holding a datapad in her Hacking Claws, lifting a hand up to adjust her Overwatch Visor with a pair of pink claws.

"It would've helped if you'd have told me that my brother was there, and that he'd forged an alliance with the Blue Suns," Roxanne mentioned to the woman at the end of the room, whom was considerably older than Roxanne. While Roxanne was 34, young by her race's standards, Jennisara was 472, which was still pretty young since Luxionans and Vangels lived for up to 10,000. The cyber terrorist was still a lot older than the younger Luxionan.

"Tsk, sorry dear, both of those little bits of information are even news to me," the Vangel said in her thick Russian accent. She shrugged her shoulders helplessly as she was about to check one of the holo-windows floating around her, noticing how the younger woman was limping across the room. She immediately set down the datapad and cast away the holo-windows before striding fervently up to her bleeding partner. "You also didn't tell me that you were hurt."

Jennisara flipped her tri-colored hair out of her face as she cupped the smaller woman's face in her hand, much to Roxanne's displeasure. The elder's face scrunched up in a critical frown as she studied the cuts on the younger's face and arms as well as the still-bleeding bullet wounds peppering her arms and legs. She even noticed some grazes on her sides as well as a couple more holes in her lower back.

"Goodness Roxanne, what did you walk into? A firing range?" Jennisara asked the auburn haired girl as she let go of her face and motioned one of her drones over with a wave of her hand. "Mauve, please fetch me a bottle of medi-gel and some gauze bandages please."

"Right away, Ms. Vairaen," the drone said in its masculine toned computer voice, speeding to the far side of the room to the lift, taking it to the level above them that contained their food as well as medical supplies.

"Really Roxanne, you must be more careful," Jennisara lightly scolded the younger woman, stroking the backs of her long claws down the uninjured part of Roxanne's cheek slowly.

"I'm only as careful as I can be when you inform me of upcoming danger. And please stop that," Roxanne said with a slight blush, lightly batting away Jennisara's hand as the drone came back with the medical supplies.

"Fine. Now let's get you patched up. Come along," Jennisara said as she turned around, walking towards the lift, Roxanne following close behind the elder woman as they headed up to their sleeping quarters to apply the medi-gel.

 **A/N: So, biggest chapter yet. Side note too, I hate the ff summary system. It really needs to allow more character usage, because I can't fit the summary of this whole story accurately into 200 characters or less (or whatever the character limit is). Anyway, different POV's. Didn't want this to just be about Ascher; the other characters in this story have lives too. Sorry for not updating regularly, especially with this chapter. I'm a high school senior with stuff to do, an extracurricular orchestra, and this to attend to, so updates won't be on a regular schedule. I will try to shoot for every week-ish, so they'll be relatively frequent. Also, Roxanne and Jennisara aren't going to be in a relationship. Just saying it now. Roxanne isn't lesbian or bisexual, she's straight.**

 **Also, to the 2 or 3 people who read this story, I'm thinking of starting an Ao3 account for other ME fics. I'm not completely sure about it yet, so just putting it out there. One more thing before I go: Either Die A Hero. Good story. Very funny. It's on Ao3 by an author who's name starts with a K. The pairing it Garrus/Nihlus/Saren. It doesn't start right away if that discourages you from reading it. The story is 199 chapters after all and I'm only on chapter 70 something. Anyway, toodles!**


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